I’m running faster than I have any right to. I try not to turn and look over my shoulder, but the steady crack of full-grown trees splintering and the boom of footsteps keep getting closer. Louder.
James is ahead of me, running just as fast.
Our levels must be improving our bodies, but it’s not going to be enough to outrun the thing behind us. Every second, it gets closer.
James’s foot catches on something beneath the snow and he’s flung forward, arms windmilling. It happens so fast there’s no time to react before he crunches into a tree face-first. He falls motionless.
My stomach drops as I skid to my knees beside him and check to see if he’s still breathing. “Not dead,” I whisper.
“Yet,” Bugbug adds. He’s sitting cozy in his little craft, beady eyes pointed up the hill we just sprinted down.
The trees near the top shake, then snap apart. My throat bobs as I watch it come into view.
I see its head first, fighting the visceral wave of nausea to see what looks like an almost normal human face at such a scale. The head alone must be ten feet from chin to crown. The skin has the same grayish cast as the empties and the features look like they belong on some bored businessman. The eyes are half-lidded, mouth hanging open, slightly crooked.
It stops, soulless eyes finding me across the distance. I feel their weight pressing down on me, paralyzing me.
James is unconscious. I can try to carry him back to the outpost, but it’s at least a ten minute jog from here. Even when we were both on our own feet, this thing was gaining on us. I’d never make it.
A wave of cold washes over my whole body as I stand, giving James one last look. “You owe me for this.”
The giant still watches me as I sprint to the side, trying to draw its attention as far from James as I can, waving my arms as I run. One second passes, then two, then three…
A tree snaps like a gunshot and the pounding resumes, the giant not just walking toward me now but running.
Oh… fuck. What the hell am I doing?
The absurdity of it all churns in my gut as I see Bugbug floating beside me. “Advice?” I ask between heavy breaths. I’m weaving between trees, enhanced legs pistoning as fast as I can manage. But it’s not nearly fast enough. Not even close.
“Bugbug advises the stupid human to avoid fighting the big one.”
Useless…
I reach the top of a hill and freeze. There’s a small dip and then a sheer wall of frozen rock curving in all directions, blocking my path. I’d have to climb or circle around to continue, and—
I turn, stomach feeling like it’s trying to drop out of my ass when I look up and see the giant looming over me. It’s completely naked, but the body is missing certain details like nipples, a belly button, or genitals. Even the fingers and toes have no nails.
“You don’t want to do this!” I shout up at it, feeling ridiculous.
One of its massive arms reaches toward me, the sheer size of the thing making it seem as if it’s moving in slow motion.
I run to the side just as it tries to scoop up the place where I’d been standing. Its brows crease and it lowers itself to one knee, seeming frustrated as it tries to scoop me with the other hand.
I run back in the other direction, heart pounding in my throat. Somehow, this thing trying to gently pick me up is a thousand times worse than if it was swatting at me or stomping.
It misses again, and the giant’s face screws up in rage so sudden and intense I freeze for a moment. But it’s a moment too long.
I didn’t even see it winding up for the punch, and there’s nothing slow about it.
I raise my left arm on instinct, teeth clenched and eyes squinted shut as I brace to be splattered. The fist eclipses everything as it comes closer and then—
I’m coughing on my hands and knees. I lift my head but it feels far heavier than it should. With blurry eyes, I try to blink away the fog. “Where the hell…” I murmur, blood dribbling from my mouth as soon as I talk.
Bugbug is staring at me, his single nostril flaring urgently. “It comes! Get up! Get up!”
I shake my head, feeling marginally better as I stumble up to my feet. And then I feel it in my chest. Right beside the charge attack I absorbed from the empty is… something huge. It burns like acid in my body, so powerful I think I might not be able to hold it for long.
Then I hear the thumping and the warbling, inhuman shout of rage.
It’s still coming.
I must have somehow survived blocking that punch but been flung to the far fucking corners of the forest. I probably only lived because the snow was thick enough to cushion me on impact. Now I can see the huge streak from where I flew in here, along with broken branches high above.
God… thick snow or not, I don’t think I should’ve been able to survive that.
The giant bursts into view, face still twisted in that terrible mask of rage.
The pressure in my chest is too much. The burn is like magma now, threatening to melt me from the inside out. I let it loose, feeling the pressure shifting down my shoulder and forearm as the giant bounds toward me, each step seeming to eat up half a mile in an instant.
I brace for the transformation, halfway expecting one of my fingers to grow so large I can’t even lift it anymore, only to die as the S+ potential asshole with a horribly mutated finger. But my index finger glows bright and stays the same size. It looks normal, except for the impossible amount of energy I feel in it.
It’s too much. If I hold this another second, my finger is going to rip itself open. My arm is going to explode. I’m going to—
I lift my arm and start swinging it toward the approaching giant the moment I realize whatever’s inside my finger is about to burst out, but I’m a split second too late.
My index finger is pointed just to the right of the giant when a shockwave of white light erupts from my finger, blasting away snow and ripping the pines from the trees overhead. My feet stay planted on the ground but I slide back as if yanked from behind by a rocket. My eyes go wide as I watch the ripple of disturbed air explode forward, ripping trees from the ground, shattering bark, and carving a curved crater across the ground that runs nearly a hundred feet forward.
I fall to one knee, finger feeling numb as I stare at the destruction. There’s a wedge of open sky ahead now, the trees completely eviscerated and all the snow blown away. Everything in the path of my finger is simply gone.
The giant has paused, its angry features now warped in a mask of almost child-like fear. It looks at the long scar across the ground, then at me, then back at the crater. It takes one cautious step backward, then turns and runs.
I slump to the ground, head pounding. Holy. Shit. I force my eyes up again, staring at the carnage to be sure I’m not imagining what just happened. “Did you know I could do that?” I finally ask Bugbug.
“S+ potential,” he says simply.
“Yeah… no shit.”
I look down at my arm and cringe. As soon as I see it, the pain registers. My shoulder is on fire and I’m pretty sure it’s badly dislocated, if not worse. The skin from my fingertip to my elbow is blistered and bleeding in several places. I try to lift it and it just… ignores me.
“Well…” I say, more to myself than Bugbug. “That was still cool as shit, even if my arm is fucked.” A wave of nausea rolls over me as the pain keeps ramping up. I sink down, back to a tree and close my eyes, waiting for the worst of it to pass.
The pain has reduced to a mere mind-shattering agony by the time James arrives.
He’s limping heavily and holding one arm awkwardly, but looks better than I feel. “Followed your tracks. Honestly expected to find a bloodstain, but—” he trails off, head slowly tracking the long line of destruction streaking out from where I’m sitting. “Uh…”
“Blocked a giant-sized punch,” I say, teeth chattering. I don’t know if it’s from the cold or the pain. “Then I…” I raise my good arm, point my index finger, and pantomime firing a cannon-like shot, complete with sound effects.
James’s forehead creases. “You did that?” he asks, clearly skeptical.
“Ask my gimp arm if you don’t believe me,” I say, nodding my chin toward my arm.
He’s quiet for a long moment, as if he’s trying to process the idea. “Okay, if I believed you, then you’re also saying you… what… killed the giant with one attack?”
I tilt my head, wincing a little. “I’m not sure if it would’ve killed it. I kind of missed. But it did scare him off.”
“You missed?” James looks to the side again, seeming to double check the apparent size of the attack. “There’s a path of destruction ten feet wide. How could you miss with something like that?”
“I’m sorry,” I say, sucking air through my teeth as my dangling right arm jolts with fresh agony. “I think you meant to thank me for distracting the giant and scaring it off, thereby saving your ass.”
James is silent a while, then he chuckles. “Jesus, brother… I’m just glad you’re on my team. But maybe we can work on that aim of yours. I saw you torch a tree when the empties were charging, too.”
We don’t talk much on our way back to the outpost. Mostly, I think we’re both in too much pain for small talk. With any luck, there are more of those magic syringes back at camp and we can both shoot ourselves up and skip what feels like it could be a painful and long recovery.
I touch my neck, just to be sure. Like I guessed, my level hasn’t changed since the fight with the empties. As badass as blocking a giant’s punch and scaring it off with a finger cannon was, it apparently wasn’t worth any experience. But I can’t help imagining how many levels I might have gained if I hadn’t missed.
Once we’re back inside camp, a small crowd gathers around us.
Lana and Frederick step to the front, looking both of us over. “What the hell happened?”
“We found the monster,” James says. “Garrick shot a finger gun at it and scared it off. Now his arm’s fucked.”
There are baffled looks all around, but I’m too delirious with pain to care. “He left out the part where he tripped and fell face-first into a tree. James slept through the whole thing.”
“Fucker,” he groans, shoulder bumping me.
We both hiss from the impact.
Miyasha appears between us. “I think both of you have had enough fighting for one day. We still have some of those syringes, right?” she asks.
Lana and Frederick share a look, almost as if they’re considering withholding them.
Miyasha sighs and storms toward one of the buildings. A moment later, she emerges with two of the healing syringes. “We only have these because James and Garrick got us the spheres. Does anyone have a problem with that?” she waits, eyes scanning the others. When nobody responds, she tosses them to each of us.
James catches his and I fumble mine with my left hand, dropping it to the ground. She sighs, picks it up for me, and then injects me at the shoulder. “I’ve been working on something for you,” she says as she helps me limp back toward my cabin. “I’ll show you once you’re less… half-dead.”