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n!Trigger Warning!

nThere are depictions of torture in this chapter, so viewer discretion is advised, and please proceed with your own caution.

n*****

nLater that day, when we had a chance to rest, I took a one-hour nap… and had a dream of something I’d rather not remember.

n…

nSoon, we departed from the rendezvous point and split up into the humid forest, where I only had a single dagger in order to survive.

nI knew I had to quickly find all the basic necessities so I could survive in this dangerous forest that was lurking with savage beasts.

nBears and the large ass snakes were what I was worried about.

nAfter scowering a few miles of land, I found the perfect spot for me to stay: There was a large open piece of grassy land underneath a large canopy that sat neatly beside a thirst-quenching lake.

nIt looked decently clear.

nThat night I went to sleep underneath a small tent of branches and leaves, expecting my worst enemies to be a snake or bear… but what I didn’t know was that there was something even worse lurking about that forest.

nAfter what only seemed to be a few seconds, I snapped open my eyes and felt a searing pain in both my hands and feet.

nI looked at all four of my limbs and noticed I had been hammered to a stone wall with wooden stakes that pierced straight through my palms and feet.

nBlood dripped from both of my limbs, and a sense of unease washed over my body.

nNo animal could’ve done this… meaning I had been captured by humans.

n“Oh damn, he woke up. I thought you killed him,”

n“What do you mean? I thought you wanted to slit his throat?”

n“We just need his flesh, guys… If we don’t have any meat to bait out animals, then we won’t survive,”

n“We could just eat him,”

n“Well, seeing him screaming in pain would be satisfying….”

n“Stop being an idiot and go knock him out clean again. We can’t have him going insane and trying to bite us,”

nI had been captured by humans in order to be used as bait for real meat instead of human meat…

nThe people who I knew I were competing against were desperate, but I didn’t expect them to be this desperate.

nI was naive, and I thought I could outsmart them, reason with them, try and become friends with them and let me join their group… but they were monsters.

n“ARGHHHHHHHH!”

nI cried out in pain as they shaved off my skin, only taking tiny parts of my flesh in order to save up enough bait for other animals.

nI’d say this went on for a few days until they began to cut out chunks of my flesh and enjoyed the screams of agony that escaped from my mouth.

nThough, I continued to plead for my life, even when they cauterized the wound so I wouldn’t bleed to death.

nFear had consumed my entire body, and pleading was the only reasonable thing I knew to do.

nReasonable… I tried to be reasonable with monsters.

nAfter an entire week of being captured, I felt my mind slowly slip out of my grasp, my sanity still trying to cling to the remaining bits and pieces of my mind.

nAnd that day, I realized that in order to beat monsters… you must become a monster.

nMy eyes bled from staring so long, attempting to gather as much information that I could reel in with my intelligence.

nAnd after a few more days… I was ready.

n“Hey, you son of a bitch… Stop cutting my torso. I’ve already lost all feeling in my abs,” I said, and the big and burly man who was enjoying my worm-like squirming looked up at me with a disgusting and nauseating expression.

nHe pressed his face against mine as if to intimidate me… but I bit his nose off and then ripped all four of my limbs out of their places holders.

nWith large holes in my hands and feet, I dove on top of the man and bit his face off with my sanity, soon leaving.

nHe still continued to struggle, but I grabbed the dagger hanging around his with all eight of my fingers, both of my pinky’s missing, and stabbed straight down onto his face repeatedly.

nKSH KSH KSH KSH

nThe sound of the dagger scraping the skull was nauseating, but I didn’t have time to enjoy this sweet sense of relief as the others were now slowly surrounding me like a pack of wolves.

n“You should’ve stayed there like a good kid and waited for the test to end,” The leader said before licking his knife and then charging toward me.

nAll the others dog-piled on top of me… but I had monitored all their movements over the past few days.

nTheir stupid small spars where they actually tried to kill each other worked to my advantage as I caught all the flaws in their movements.

nSHING SHING SHING

nI ducked down, and as I lost all feeling in my hands, I caught the knife with my mouth before slicing the achilees tendons of one of the guys that had a weak stance.

nHe immediately tripped up and writhed on the ground as I dodged to the side, causing two of the men to stab each other as their balance was always offset due to their bulky upper body but skinny lower body.

n“ARGHHHHHH!”

nI smiled as everything I had predicted was working. Everything was falling into place like a puzzle.

nSHING SHING SHING SHING

nThen, the only one standing was the leader, who arrogantly looked down on me.

n“Seems the saying is true… When you back an animal into a dark enough corner, it’ll turn into a beast… What a wonderful thing we’ve created. But, you’re a bit too arrogant to think you could kill me,”

nThe fight that commenced was a bloodbath with both sides receiving so many injuries that we both could’ve dropped dead at any moment… and he came out on top.

n“Fuck… Fuck… I did all that… And I can’t….”

nMy consciousness faded, but when I reopened my eyes, I noticed I was in an emergency infirmary at the rendezvous point.

n“Huh?”

n…

n“*sigh*… Was he watching over me then? Is that the reason I survived?” I muttered as bullets whizzed past the top of my helmet.

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