Red eyes. Crushing limbs. Jaws that made your knees buckle.
His dagger wouldn't save him. At best — scratch it. Only a miracle could help him escape.
Everything slowed. With each step Ryskar took, his heart beat faster and faster, like a sprint at full speed.
A mixture of adrenaline, strange energy, and a touch of madness flooded his blood.
The charging beast began to resemble an enraged bull. The red forest turned into crowded stands. The only thing missing was the music... But his imagination was able to fill in even that.
He'd seen this before.
A brave matador danced on the edge of life and death in front of the enraged beast, and the crowd cheered his actions. There was something about this madness that stirred the blood.
Something that made him want to follow the matador's dance with death.
This bull would undoubtedly catch up with him, crush him, and tear him apart, but...
But...
But...
"…!!!"
Why was his heart on fire right now?
Why did it refuse to surrender and beg for battle?
Why was it blazing like this?!
"RRRWAAAHH!!!"
Ryskarl was 15 meters away from him and charging forward at full speed. He had about 3 seconds.
He needed a miracle.
3...
He had a dagger clenched in his right hand... But now it was useless.
2...
'Shit!'
He still had the metal cable clenched in his left hand... But it was too slow.
He had left his body... But it almost refused to obey him.
1...
Nothing left.
"RRAAAWW!!!"
The foul stench of blood and mangled flesh hit him. The predator was right in front of him.
'FUCK!!!'
A moment before the collision, his gaze fell on the mechanism at the end of the cable.
But his left hand reacted faster than his eyes, already grabbing the handle.
He felt a vibration. The identification check took less than a split second, and then...
"RRRRAAAAH!!!" Ryskar opened its mouth, intending to bite into his neck.
*Swoosh!* There was a tightening sound, and an irresistible force carried him upward, nearly tearing his arm from his shoulder.
"...?!"
Shock and ecstasy were all he felt now.
The mechanism pulled him out of mortal danger, but Ryskar still tried to bite off at least his right arm.
Without looking, he pulled his arm back and then stabbed the metal head with his dagger.
There was a steel screech, then the crack of something breaking, and then...
"RRYAAAA!!!"
Only now, as he flew through the air, did he realize that what he was facing was not a bull, but a mechanical monster in the form of a feline beast. And right now, this beast was howling in hellish pain.
A steel dagger was lodged in the narrow slit of its right eye-socket, and its predatory red color had noticeably faded.
'A miracle?!' he screamed in his mind.
He flew straight towards the branches where his hook was stuck.
The sensation of flying without having to climb, the heat of emotion, and the piercing feeling of a battle won — all this took his breath away, but what surprised him most was the sudden miracle.
'But how?!' he exclaimed in disbelief in his head as he tried to figure out how to hook onto the branches.
He checked every fingerprint on the seven corpses, but none of them matched... Who would have thought the eighth corpse — the former owner of his body — was the true owner of the automatic grappling hook.
Apparently, he would have to revise his theory that his appearance was identical to his past self. Perhaps everything really seemed that way to him, but from the outside or in the eyes of other people, he might have looked different.
But now none of that mattered, because a miracle had truly happened... And now he was flying.
Enraged Ryskar, rushing after him, was now wounded, just like him.
'An eye for an eye,' he thought with grim satisfaction and flew headfirst into the branches.
…
'Daamn!'
There was almost no chance to scream out loud. Not only was his breathing rapid, but he was also experiencing sharp flashes of pain.
The wound on his back had torn open again, leaving a bloody trail behind him. His face was covered with all kinds of scratches and bruises.
The process of adapting to the strange mechanism of ascending and descending was simply awful, but still...
'This is a real grappling hook!'
With it, he could almost fly.
"RAAAW!!!"
"Aaaaaaaah!"
However, he couldn't hold back a panicked scream from the roar chasing him.
He clung to tree trunks and branches with the grappling hook, while trying not to crash from the height he was gaining.
"RRRWAA!!!"
Ryskar's claws tore at the ground, and the beast's jaws tried to bite off his heel every time.
'When the hell will you stop?!' Even if he shouted, the predator would hardly respond with anything other than a roar.
The initial joy of flying had not yet faded, but the constant pursuit of the beast brought back the tension.
Was it just bravado, or was he sure he could keep the beast chasing shadows until all the blood finally drained from it, or the lifesaving hook finally broke? Unfortunately, both endings were dead ends, which meant he needed a plan.
'Left, left, left!' And he was already executing it, moving in the direction indicated by the spots on the trees.
The card of Red Lamb Ryskar said that this bloody forest was to the left of the 'Entrance.'
Perhaps he was walking towards what should be 'right next to the Entrance' or walking diagonally, approaching the Entrance directly.
"...!" Be that as it may, he again escaped the predator's claws and threw the hook forward.
He hoped to escape from the bloody forest as soon as possible.
...
Forty minutes passed.
"K-kha..." He was gasping for breath and spitting saliva with a taste of iron.
Almost an hour of marathon climbing and running at full speed. His muscles felt like lead and almost refused to respond to his brain's commands.
The bleeding had formed a huge dark red stain across half of his back.
In this state, he began to think that the idea of being torn apart at the very beginning wasn't so bad after all.
But anyway...
"Finally..." he croaked, landing behind a tree.
*Crackk!!!* The trunk behind him was almost immediately torn apart by the monster's claws, but the grappling hook was already carrying him away.
Every second was literally a dance on the edge of death. And now he was coming to the end.
The trees were finally coming to an end, as was his strength.
He trusted the signs on the pale trees and came straight here.
Something had to happen, or else it would be the end for him...
And that something was the terrain that replaced the forest.
It was a small field dotted with truly beautiful flowers.
These flowers were poppies, dyed... an intense scarlet. Just like blood.
"...?!!!"
The miraculous salvation turned out to be not what he had expected.
After all, all six senses, including intuition, literally screamed about it.
He had come straight to...
A harvest field.