After fighting the man-eaters, Athan collapses to his knees. His arms were dangling, and blood was flooding out of them. The wounds from the man-eaters were huge bite marks, with each mini-tooth engraved into his flesh. A few seconds pass, and Athan’s body falls to the ground.

  “Ha. I guess exhaustion got to me.” Athan’s voice was quiet. “Maybe it was okay for me to get some sleep now.”

  Athan lies on the cold ground. His body is slowly healing with each passing second. Only the thirst and hunger remained. Suddenly, Athan’s eyes shot open. His eyes look over at the man-eater’s corpse.

  He doesn’t have much strength left, but his thirst and hunger were too much now to ignore.

  With the bit of strength he has left, he uses his legs and begins to push his body across the ground. His arms were of no help; they were utterly destroyed and would take some time to heal. With every push with his legs, he would grit his teeth through the pain.

  Eventually, he found himself lying atop the man-eater. The dead man-eater's blood was still fresh.

  ‘Is this stuff drinkable?’ After several moments of hesitation and worry, Athan opens his mouth and uses his tongue to lick up a sliver of the blood.

  “Fuck!” Athan spits out the blood and gags. “Their blood is fucking nasty.”

  But no matter how bad the blood was, Athan knew he had to drink it to survive. Athan, with resentment, forced himself to drink the man-eaters' blood until his thirst was quenched.

  Once he had enough to drink, he lay flat on the ground with his face towards the sky.

  With the night came much colder temperatures. And with colder temperatures, it made it harder for Athan to rest. To make it worse, his body was twitching due to the wounds the man-eaters left. Athan started to get the feeling he was in for a long night.

  Sitting in silence, the wind brushes against his face. The wind was calm and relaxing; it almost made him fall asleep, but instead, he just kept jumping in and out of consciousness.

  A few hours passed, and Athan was still lying on the ground. His eyes were as wide as ever. And in the silence, faint noises from the darkness of the paths slowly began to reach him.

  ‘What the hell?’

  Athan sits upright, using his lower and upper body strength in place of his still-weak arms. Sitting upright, he adjusts his eyes.

  In the darkness were the same purple eyes—the same ones he is sick of seeing.

  Athan panics and ends up falling over onto his side, squirming. But with no strength and little to no rest, he won’t get very far.

  The clanking sounds of teeth grew louder, and tears began to run down Athan's face.

  “I’m fucking dead.”

  With a flash of speed, dozens—no, maybe hundreds of man-eaters charge at Athan. There was nothing he could do, so he closed his eyes and slowly started to accept his fate.

  The man-eaters jump on him, and with their sharp teeth, they bite into him. With each bite, mini-teeth tore large chunks of flesh off, leaving gaping wounds. His legs were eaten to the point where there was no bone left. Both of his arms were chomped off as well.

  ‘Fuck.’

  Once the man-eaters decided they had taken their fill, they got off of him and cleared the way to a path in front of Athan. Only one man-eater remained on top of Athan, and that was his head.

  Forcefully, the man-eater begins to drag Athan’s body against the ground, leaving a thick trail of blood.

  ***

  Being dragged across the ground, Athan finally regains consciousness. His breathing was heavy.

  Not knowing what’s happening, Athan opens his eyes. Dragged face up, he stares at the ceiling. There was a massive arch at the top of the ceiling, and the walls were all converging toward it.

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  Suddenly, Athan is thrown high into the air and lands on something soft yet firm. Looking around, he found himself on a mountain of dead bodies.

  Panic creeps in as what remains of Athan’s body trembles. Due to the shock, Athan hasn’t even realized that his arms and legs were missing. And to add to the pain, a hot liquid slowly rises in his throat and jumps out of his mouth.

  A tiredness swept over Athan, and his eyes slowly closed.

  When Athan finally wakes, his body has completely healed. The tiredness had faded; he felt alive.

  Only one thing…he forgot for a second he was sitting on a mountain of human corpses.

  “Ah! Fuck!” Athan waves his hand in the air to stir the smell away from him.

  With all his strength back, Athan gets himself up and starts slowly climbing down the mountain on human corpses. While climbing down, something latches onto Athan’s hand.

  Raising his head to look at what grabbed him, his face becomes contorted. A hand from a supposedly dead person was holding onto him.

  He tries to break free, but more dead people's hands latch onto him. They suddenly begin moving their mouths.

  “Help usss!”

  “Please—save us!”

  Their voices were cracked, thin with terror.

  Athan manages to free himself, but he ends up falling to the bottom. The drop wasn’t big, so no significant damage was done to him. Athan gets to his feet and looks up at the mountain of dead people. There was almost no light source, except for the top of the arch, which shone on the mountain of dead people and possibly living people.

  Instead of being fixated on the mountain of dead people and feeling empathy for them, he focuses on where he is. The place had rocky walls and spiked rocks lit by blue.

  Then it dawned on Athan that this place reminded him of the caverns. The only difference was that this cave was much larger, almost like a dungeon.

  Being careful, Athan walked lightly through the dungeon so as not to catch attention from any man-eaters that could be near him.

  The dungeon was split off by many rock walls, each with long, wide paths. To Athan, it felt like a maze, but all the paths would lead to the mountain of humans.

  Walking around, Athan manages to find small groups of man-eaters walking around or eating on human corpses. He manages to keep himself hidden in the shadows.

  ‘Am I in man-eater haven?’ Athan frowns.

  Athan continues to loom in the darkness, watching man-eaters eat and sleep.

  After some walking, he ended up back at the start, in front of the mountain of humans. While standing, thinking over his next move, he begins to hear someone talking from one of the shadow paths behind him.

  ‘Another talking monster? Genesis?’

  Athan dashes towards the mountain of dead people and starts to play dead as the voice becomes louder.

  “Is my food ready?” The voice was deep, carrying authority.

  “No, my queen.”

  Coming out of the shadows was an enormous man-eater, which looked to be about ten meters in height. And following that man-eater was a much smaller man-eater, about the same size as your typical man-eaters.

  ‘The larger one would be the queen, I assume.’ Thinks Athan.

  Once entirely out of the darkness, the queen man-eater stepped fully into view. All physical characteristics were the same, except for two. The back of Queen Man-Eater had a long tail whip, and on her head was a black crown with purple jewels in it.

  ‘Fuck, so now I have to deal with different variants of man-eaters!’

  Athan remained as still as a dead fish. No noises, nothing.

  The queen continues its walk toward the man-eaters. “How many humans remain in the peaks?”

  “Umm, there still seems to be quite a few, my queen.” The small man-eater says with a loud squeaky voice.

  “That’s good. Humans are docile creatures. When faced with death, all they can do is run away or accept, instead of trying to fight and maybe save their unfortunate lives.”

  The queen pauses and then turns herself around and walks back into the darkness of the path. The little man-eater follows her.

  ‘Damit! What am I going to do?’ Athan carefully stands up from the mountain of dead people.

  Fear starts to take over him, and he begins to scavenge around the dead humans in the hope of finding something. Eventually, he comes across a person wearing a light brown cloak and carrying a sword on their back.

  Athan walks up to the dead person and carefully removes the light brown cloak. Before putting it on, he shakes it off real quick, then he slips his arms in. After putting the cloak on, he reaches for the sword.

  Picking up the sword almost made him fall over. ‘Why is this thing so heavy?’ Athan holds the sword up as high as he can in front of him. And he tries swinging as hard as he can, but when he swings, the sword carries him down.

  Athan smirks.

  ‘I finally have a weapon.’