CHAPTER 6 : Do or Die
We lost a crucial member—the one person willing to take risks. Without him, we could barely scratch the creature. Yasuto is injured, Kira can't use one of her arms, Leo is paralyzed with fear, and Satoshi was never a fighter. I just wanted to run and hide, to get as far from the danger as possible.
But then Reiji's voice echoed in my head: "But… that's how cowards act."
The words felt like a slap across the face, colder than the red fluid swirling at my boots. I looked at the spot where Reiji had vanished into the dark water, the ripples already smoothing over as if the cavern had swallowed him whole. My lungs burned, and for a second, the silence was louder than the monster's groans.
I looked at the eight humanoids. They weren't rushing us. They were just watching, their gnarled fingers twitching as they wove those impossible, flickering blades. They knew they had us. They were waiting for me to break—waiting for me to turn my back so they could bury a knife in it.
I wiped the sweat and blood from my eyes, my grip tightening on my rifle until my fingers went numb. If I ever wanted to become a true Survivalist—if I ever wanted to see my own world again—I had to face this. If I gave up now, I wouldn't just die; I'd die a coward.
But that's not how I wanted to be remembered.
"Satoshi," I said, turning toward him. I looked directly into those cold, analytical eyes. He was the only one who hadn't been shaken by the horror unfolding around us. If anyone could cut through the panic and give us a real plan, it was him. "Do you know how to counter these new threats? Tell me there's a way through this."
Satoshi didn't blink. He didn't even look at me; his eyes were fixed on the rhythmic twitching of the humanoids' fingers. The coldness in his gaze was unsettling—it was as if he'd already moved past Reiji's fall and was simply solving a math problem. He still had his hand clamped on Yasuto's shoulder, a grip so tight his knuckles were white against the fabric of Yasuto's gear.
"Let me go!" Yasuto snarled, his voice cracking. "He's still in there! We can't just—"
"Stay back, Yasuto," Satoshi said, his voice flat and terrifyingly steady. "Diving in there won't bring him back. It'll just give that tree another body to feed on."
Yasuto's shoulders slumped, a strangled, hollow sound escaping his throat. He looked at his shaking hands. "I'm the oldest…," he whispered, his voice trembling. "I was supposed to be the protect him, but I'm just standing here while another one of us disappears."
"You can't protect anyone if you're dead," Satoshi said, not unkindly, though his eyes never left the enemies. He finally shifted those analytical eyes toward me.
"The knives aren't teleporting," Satoshi said, his voice flat and terrifyingly steady. "They're refracting. The crimson fluid they spit out creates a localized distortion in the air—like a cloak of bending light. They aren't jumping through space; they're just becoming invisible the moment they hit that red mist."
I felt a chill. "Then how did Reiji get hit in the back? We saw it pass him."
"That's the deception," Satoshi replied, his eyes narrowing. "The mist doesn't just hide the blade; it guides it. While we're busy tracking the 'ghost' of the knife that just flew past us, the real, invisible blade is curving through the air. It's designed to hit you exactly where you're the most undefended—usually the moment you turn your back to look for it. It's a sensory delay. We're reacting to where the blade was seconds ago, while the real threat has already moved into our blind spot. It doesn't strike randomly; it strikes where we aren't looking."
He pointed a steady finger at the crimson fluid swirling around the Lurer's main body. "The knives are visible until they enter the strike zone. The moment they get close, the red mist refracts the light, making the blade 'disappear' from your sight. But it doesn't stop moving. It just moves through the distortion, reappearing the split-second it buries itself in your back."
I swallowed hard, remembering the way Reiji had winced, looking for a threat that was no longer there.
"Reiji didn't lose because he was slow," Satoshi continued, his eyes analytical as he scanned the fluid. "He lost because he reacted to a ghost. But look at the fluid beneath the body. Even when the blade 'vanishes' from our eyes, it still has mass. It still pushes the air. Look at the ripples on the surface—the water doesn't lie. If you follow the ripple, you'll find the direction of these knives."
Satoshi finally looked at us "Kira, you're the fastest right now as Yasuto is injured—even with one arm, you can bait the first strike. Leo, I need a frequency that disrupts the density of that crimson vapor. If you can thin the air, the refraction will break."
I gripped my rifle, the metal slick with my own sweat. My heart was still hammering against my ribs like a trapped bird, but seeing Yasuto's grief turn into a quiet, burning rage made the panic start to calcify into resolve.
"Kira," I called out, my voice cracking but firm. "On my signal. We do this for Reiji."
She didn't say a word. She had popped her dislocated arm back into its socket, her breath hitching in a sharp wheeze. It was back in place, but she couldn't hide the way her hand trembled or the cold sweat on her forehead. The pain was still there, white-hot and pulsing, but she ignored it. She adjusted her stance, her good hand hovering over her dagger, her eyes locked on the crimson fluid in the pond.
Leo struck a jagged, high-pitched chord on his keyboard. The sound didn't just fill the room; it pierced through the fog in my mind, replacing my terror with a cold, sharp determination. I wasn't going to let it end like this.
Kira and I bolted in opposite directions, our eyes locked on the gnarled tree atop the Lurer's mass. We knew the goal: hack down the source. But Reiji's blood was still fresh on the stone, a grim reminder that reckless bravery wasn't enough—we had to be smarter.
The humanoids perched on the creature's back didn't just sit there. They leapt into the air, landing with unnatural grace on the surface of the crimson pool. They didn't sink; they stood on the liquid as if it were solid ground. In unison, their gnarled fingers twisted into that sickening knot.
"NIGHTMARISH SKILL: DECEPTIVE KNIVES," they hissed, the sound like dead leaves skittering on a grave.
The fluid beneath their feet began to churn violently, hardening into those jagged, blood-red blades. They launched toward us, vanishing into the mist almost instantly. In any other moment, we would have been defenceless, but Leo's frequency was doing its job. The air thrummed, thinning the red mist just enough.
I stopped looking for the blades in the air. Instead, I looked down.
There. The ripples.
Even if I couldn't see the knives after they reached the strike zone, I could see the water's reaction to the weight of the projectiles. Following Satoshi's lead, I tracked the disturbance on the surface, sidestepping just as a real, invisible blade whistled past my ear and tried to attack me from the back, close enough to draw blood.
"I see them!" I yelled, my voice steady for the first time. "Kira, now!"
We moved in a pincer formation, but the Lurer wasn't just a stationary target. Seeing its "Deceptive Knives" failing to find their mark, the massive entity let out a wet, vibrating growl that shook the very marrow of my bones.
Its massive tentacles lashed out with a frantic, territorial rage. They whipped through the air, creating chaos that forced us to stay defensive. While the tentacles kept us busy, the eight humanoids didn't just stand on the fluid—they began to glide across it, their movements jerky and unnervingly fast.
"They're flanking us!" Kira gasped. She ducked under a sweeping tentacle, her boots skidding on the slippery stones. She lashed out with her dagger, parrying a blood-red knife that flickered into visibility just inches from her throat. The impact sent a jolt through her injured shoulder, and she winced, her face turning a ghostly shade of white.
I snapped my rifle to my shoulder, firing a three-round burst at the nearest humanoid. The bullets tore through its fragile chest, sending it tumbling back into the crimson pond, but two more took its place instantly. They were like a hydra—cut one down, and the Lurer simply birthed more from the churning fluid.
"Focus on the trunk!" Satoshi's voice cut through the chaos, calm and clinical. "The humanoids—they'll keep coming as long as that tree stands!"
Easier said than done. Between the massive, crushing tentacles and the humanoids weaving those teleporting blades, the path to the Lurer's core felt impossible. Every time I tried to line up a shot on the tree's mouth, a tentacle would slam into the ground in front of me, sending shards of stone flying like shrapnel.
I looked at Kira. She was pinned down, trapped between a sweeping limb and three humanoids closing in with their gnarled fingers twisted into hand signs.
Yasuto didn't hesitate. Despite his mangled knee, he lunged forward, using his heavy frame to shield Kira. He caught a tentacle strike squarely in the chest, the force throwing him backward, but it gave Kira the second she needed to roll away.
The Lurer's massive eye rolled in its socket, locking onto me with a look of pure, calculating hatred. The mouth on the trunk widened into that demonic smile, and a deep, guttural sound began to build in its throat.
It wasn't a groan this time. It was a command.
"NIGHTMARISH SKILL: BLOODBOUND MIRAGE – DIVERGENCE"
The eight humanoids stopped their individual attacks. They formed a circle around the base of the tree, their voices joining in a chant that drowned out even Leo's music. The red fluid around them began to rise, forming a swirling tornado of crimson fluid.
The crimson tornado was a massive wall of spinning blood, taking up nearly the entire arena. It felt like standing inside a giant meat grinder.
The eight humanoids stood in a perfect circle, their fingers locked together. They weren't just monsters—they looked like living anchors, their bodies weeping red as the wind tore at their skin. They were screaming, their voices joining together to fuel the storm.
Leo was hunched over his keyboard, his face wet with tears. He was slamming the keys, trying to make his music louder than the roar of the wind, but the tree's ritual was too strong. The sound of the vortex swallowed his notes before they could even reach the enemy.
"It's not enough!" Leo shrieked, his voice breaking. "The tree—it's drowning me out! I can't break through the noise!"
The storm was churning out those blood-red knives like a factory, hurling them toward Kira and me with terrifying speed. They were much faster than the ones before—lethal blurs that cut through the wind. I tried to look down at the crimson pond, but the storm had turned the water into a thrashing mess; I couldn't see the ripples anymore. I was blind.
Kira was being overwhelmed. She was desperately trying to dodge and parry the deceptive knives with her dagger, but there were just too many. Each new slice was slowly draining the life out of her. Yasuto threw himself in front of her, using his sword and his own body as a shield, but even he was being carved apart by the invisible strikes. The storm was growing, its lethal reach expanding toward Leo. If it reached him, his music would stop, and we'd be finished.
Then, the water exploded.
A massive tentacle erupted from the pond, whipping through the air toward me. I dodged it instinctively, but my heart sank when I realized I wasn't the target. It was aiming for Leo.
"LEO! MOVE!" I screamed, my voice cracking with desperation.
But it was too late. The tentacle slammed into him with sickening force. He managed to pull his keyboard up at the last second, which was the only thing that kept the jagged tip from piercing his skull, but the impact was devastating. Leo was sent flying, his body crashing hard against the jagged rocky wall of the chamber. He slumped to the ground, motionless and unconscious.
The silence following Leo's collapse was deafening, but in that void, something inside me finally snapped. It wasn't courage—it was something raw, jagged survival mechanism I didn't even know I had. My vision blurred, then sharpened with terrifying clarity. The air felt heavy, almost liquid, and I could feel the trajectory of the wind before it even hit my skin.
I didn't think; I just moved. My body reacted on its own, twisting and ducking with a precision that felt foreign to me. I charged straight toward the Lurer's trunk, a desperate blur of motion.
A deceptive knife flickered into existence right in front of my throat. My newfound instincts was still raw, still developing, and I wasn't fast enough to dodge it entirely. Instead of panicking, I snapped my rifle up and fired a single shot point-blank. The bullet collided with the blood-red blade, the knife shattering the projectile instead of my flesh. The impact sparked against the mist, giving me the opening I needed to keep running.
I didn't just focus on myself. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a jagged blade curving toward Kira's unprotected side. I fired again while in full sprint—the bullet whistled past her, intercepting the invisible threat just in time.
"Yasuto! Get her up!" I roared, my voice sounding like a stranger's. "Do something, or we're all dead!"
Yasuto, his face pale from blood loss and exhaustion, hooked his arm under Kira's. He limped through the red mist, dragging her toward Satoshi, who stood at a relatively safe distance from the vortex's edge.
"Keep her alive," Yasuto grunted, handing the nearly unconscious Kira over.
He didn't wait for a response. Turning back toward the Lurer, he saw me struggling against the wind. Yasuto let out a guttural roar, charging through the storm despite his mangled knee. He reached me just as a massive tentacle slammed down. Without a word, he interlocked his fingers, creating a step.
"Go! Cut that damn thing down!" he bellowed.
I stepped into his hands, and with one massive, agonizing heave, Yasuto launched me upward. I flew through the churning crimson storm, the air screaming past my ears. I landed hard on the fleshy, pulsating mass atop the Lurer, right at the base of the gnarled trunk.
But the moment I landed, the adrenaline began to fade away. It had drained me completely. A crushing weight settled into my bones, and my muscles felt like they'd been replaced by lead. I tried to raise my weapon, but my arms trembled violently.
The Lurer sensed my weakness. The tree made the humanoids redirect their focus towards me. A deceptive knife flickered into existence, slicing across my shoulder. Another bit into my thigh. I fell to one knee, my vision blurring as I took cut after cut.
"MIZUNO! BE CAREFUL!" Yasuto shouted.
His shout seemed to jumpstart the air itself. Near the wall, a blood-stained hand gripped the jagged stone. Leo was stirring, looking half dead. He didn't stand up, and he didn't reach for his shattered equipment. Instead, his fingers began to move against the empty air, twitching with a feverish, rhythmic intensity. A spectral keyboard, woven from his own willpower, hummed into existence. It wasn't made of plastic or wire—it was made of light and sound, glowing with a vibrant, rhythmic intensity that cut through the mist like a flare.
"Imaginary skill: Spectral Keyboard" he muttered.
Every time he struck a "key," a shockwave of colour rippled outward, physically pushing back the red mist. The music wasn't coming from speakers anymore; it was vibrating out of his very soul, a beautiful symphony that felt like it was stitching our shattered nerves back together.
I felt a sudden jolt of energy, and my vision flooded with a new sense of hope and raw willpower. The crushing weight of the situation shifted—it didn't feel like a hopeless death trap anymore. I realized I couldn't die here, not before I found a way back to my normal life.
I bolted toward the tree. Thanks to Leo's music, the red mist had thinned out significantly, though the storm was still howling around me. A crimson knife zoomed toward my chest; I didn't even flinch, using my rifle as a shield. The impact was violent, the blade splitting my weapon clean in half, but it didn't slow me down.
I ran toward that gnarled trunk with everything I had left. I was the last hope for my team, and I was going to prove once and for all that I wasn't just a coward – I was a survivalist.
A sudden clarity washed over me. Even with the storm howling, the knives headed in my direction seemed to move in slow motion. I could see their every twitch; their deceptive strike zone was almost non-existent now that Leo's neon symphony was stripping away their cover. I dodged them with a fluid, easy grace that didn't even feel like my own.
As I reached the base of the tree, I didn't just blindly swing. I took the jagged, broken halves of my rifle and hurled them with all my might at the main trunk. It was a gamble—a bait. It took the lure, their deceptive knives flickering into existence and shredding the metal scraps instead of me.
In that split second of distraction, I lunged.
I gripped the old man's sword with both hands. As I pulled it back for the strike, the blade began to hum, emitting a faint, steady glow that cut through the crimson gloom. It felt alive, reacting to my desperation and the rhythm of the spectral music. With a primal roar, I brought the blade down in one massive, sweeping arc.
The steel bit through the wood like it was nothing but paper. There was a sickening, wet crack as the sword sliced clean through the main trunk, severing the gnarled tree from the pulsating flesh-blob below.
The creature's shriek was a physical blow, a sound so violent it felt like it was trying to rip the eardrums right out of my head. Behind me, the neon glow of the spectral keyboard flickered once, twice, and then shattered into nothingness. Leo collapsed, his body hitting the stone floor with a heavy thud; he had pushed his soul past the breaking point, and he had nothing left to give.
The silence that followed was even worse.
I looked down at the stump I had just severed, expecting it to wither. Instead, the Lurer's massive eye rolled upward, turning a bruised, suffocating crimson. A new mouth—wider and more jagged than the first—split open across the remaining base of the trunk. It didn't scream this time. It began to chant.
The sound was a low, vibrating hum that made the very marrow of my bones ache. It was its final, desperate ritual.
My hands trembled as I gripped the old man's glowing sword. My energy was gone, replaced by a crushing, hollow exhaustion that made it hard to even stand. I wasn't ready for this. I had given everything I had to that last strike, and the monster was still breathing—still fighting.
"No..." I whispered, my voice cracking. "Just stay down."
I stood there, gasping for air, as the newly formed mouth on the stump began to mutter with a voice like grinding stones:
"NIGHTMARISH SKILL: BLOODBOUND MIRAGE – CONVERGENCE"
The effect was instantaneous. The remaining crimson tornado, which had finally started to die down, was suddenly jerked backward. It wasn't just fading anymore; it was being sucked into a dense, throbbing sphere of pure blood-red energy hovering right above the trunk.
I watched in horror as the eight humanoids surrounding the monster were ripped from their feet. Their bodies stretched and deformed like wax in a flame as they were dragged into the same pulsing orb. Even the thick fluid in the pond began to rise in massive, roiling columns, merging into the sphere until the basin was left nearly bone-dry.
The Lurer wasn't just dying—it was condensing every last drop of its power into one final, terrifying point.
I stood frozen as the sphere pulsed, a terrifying heartbeat that shook the very air in my lungs. But then, the Lurer's massive, crimson eye did something I didn't expect.
It didn't blink. It didn't narrow. It went completely, shock white.
"Look!" Yasuto's voice cracked from across the chamber, his finger pointing with trembling intensity. "The eyes! Something's happening inside!"
A wet, jagged tear erupted right through the centre of the fleshy mass beneath the tree. It wasn't a cut from a blade—it looked like something was clawing its way out from the abyss. A fountain of dark red, pressurized fluid sprayed into the air, and then, with a spray of gore that painted the stone, a figure exploded out of the creature's chest.
Reiji.
He hit the ground in a low crouch, his figure jagged against the blinding light of the condensing sphere. He was a nightmare to look at—drenched from head to toe in the thick, black-red ichor of the beast, his clothes shredded to ribbons. But his eyes... they weren't human anymore. They burned with that same manic, predatory red aura, pulsing with a heat that seemed to steam off his skin.
He didn't say a word. He didn't even look at me. He just stood there, his chest heaving, his fingers hooked like claws as he stared at the pulsing sphere of the Convergence.
The Lurer's white eye rolled back, its final chant turning into a gurgling, pathetic whimper. The predator had been hollowed out from the inside.
I watched, paralyzed, as Reiji stood before the throbbing sphere of the Convergence. He didn't flinch. He didn't even raise a weapon. Instead, he lifted his hand and the dark red aura around him began to swirl like a localized vacuum.
The massive ball of compressed blood and souls—the thing that was supposed to bury us all—suddenly began to warp. It didn't explode. It started to drain, going into Reiji's body through his hand.
"He's... he's taking it all in," Yasuto whispered from the sidelines, his voice thick with a mix of awe and pure horror.
Reiji's back arched, his teeth bared in a silent, agonizing snarl as the last of the crimson energy vanished into his body. The chamber, which had been screaming with the sound of the vortex seconds ago, fell into a heavy, suffocating silence.
The Lurer's stump finally withered. The white eye shrivelled into a grey, leathery husk. The ancient predator was empty.
Reiji stood there for a long moment, his head bowed, steam rising from his soaked clothes. The air around him felt heavy, charged with a static that made my hair stand on end. When he finally looked up at me, the predatory red in his eyes was gone, replaced by a dull, hollow exhaustion. He took one shaky step toward the centre of the dry pond and simply collapsed.
I scrambled across the bone-dry floor of the pond, my boots slipping on the slick, grey film the creature had left behind. Reiji was hunched over, his back twitching with violent, rhythmic tremors. He wasn't calm. He wasn't resting. He looked like a man trying to swallow a live grenade.
The steam rolling off his skin smelled like iron and rot. Every time he exhaled, a thin, misty spray of crimson escaped his lungs, staining the air around him.
"Reiji?" I called out, my voice trembling. I reached out a hand, but I stopped inches away. The heat coming off him was intense, a physical wall of pressure that made my skin crawl.
He didn't answer. A low, guttural growl started deep in his chest—a sound that didn't have a single drop of human warmth left in it. It was the same wet, vibrating tone the Lurer had used right before it tried to crush us.
"Mizuno, get back!" Satoshi's voice screamed from the distance, sharper and more panicked than I'd ever heard it. "Something's wrong! He didn't just stop the skill—he's becoming it!"
Yasuto halted his limp, his face twisting into a mask of pure horror. "His aura... it's not fading. It's hardening."
Slowly, Reiji's head tilted back. His neck cracked with a sickening, woody sound, like a branch snapping in a storm. When he finally looked at me, my heart stopped.
The predatory light was gone. In its place was a thick, viscous sea of dark red. His pupils were drowned, his sclera crimson—his eyes were overflowing, leaking the same thick, hateful crimson fluid that had filled the Lurer's lair.
He wasn't looking at me like a friend. He wasn't even looking at me like a rival.
He was looking at me like I was the next thing he needed to feed on.