Victor stopped shaking. With a cold, predatory, murderous gaze, he focused all his attention on the emergency metal axe behind the creature. He dropped into a combat stance, sliding his right leg forward and bending his knees, leaning his torso into the attack.
He didn't know if he was truly ready.
"Bring it on... you son of a bitch."
The beast attacked. Its roar was so powerful that for a brief moment, Victor felt dazed, distracted enough to miss the creature charging at him. It moved with terrifying speed and agility, scuttling across the floor, the walls, and the ceiling, making as much noise as possible to intimidate its prey. Its movement was bone-chilling; watching those tentacles scuttle rapidly step after step, alternating with smaller ones, was like seeing an amalgamation of an octopus—with its fluid, wet, fleshy sounds—and a cockroach, given its dexterity and hissing sounds, which resembled a feline's but with a deeper, more distorted tone.
With every step, with every thud, the surrounding environment buckled, leaving deep gouges in its wake. All of this happened in a matter of seconds. As the beast lunged at him, Victor, gripped by a sudden surge of fury, rushed toward it. He narrowly dodged a strike from one of its razor-sharp tentacles—which nonetheless shredded the left side of his shirt between his chest and stomach—as he slid beneath it, momentarily petrified by the Ijo's massive body, which was in a state of constant mutation and expansion, grinding and reshaping fleshy and metallic tissues endlessly.
The Ijo nearly slammed into the wall, but it stopped almost instantly as it spotted Victor on the other side of the corridor, frantically reaching for an axe mounted on the wall. Letting out another scream—louder and more menacing than the last—it lunged at the boy again, faster and more brutal than before.
The split second between Victor grabbing the axe and the monster's impact was almost non-existent. The Ijo struck him just as he turned to swing the weapon, throwing him backward. He slammed onto the floor, landing hard on his back and tailbone. Almost immediately, the creature pounced, attempting to crush his head with a single blow, but the boy blocked it, using the axe to parry the strike. Despite the immense durability of the dark steel weapon, the creature snapped it nearly perfectly in half. Still, it gave the boy enough time to scramble away from the beast's clutches.
A series of subsequent strikes followed—violent and swift like razor-sharp whips. The boy tried to dodge them as best he could, crawling backward on the floor, struggling to stand up amidst the sudden rush of stress. However, the frantic chaos proved too much; he couldn't avoid the final, brutal blow that caught his leg, snapping it nearly in two.
Victor screamed, "Fuck!"
He kept crawling, dragging his broken leg behind him. It left a massive trail of blood on the floor, like a brushstroke across a canvas. The beast stood still for a moment, almost savoring the boy's wretched, instinctive attempt to escape, as if it found the sight amusing.
The boy flipped onto his stomach, dragging himself forward with his arms, using what little strength he had left. He didn't know where to go; he only knew he wanted to get as far away from the Ijo as possible. The creature, however, began to advance at a slower pace. It shuddered as it moved, emitting distorted, corrupted rattles—like a radio losing its signal—producing eerie, unsettling sounds.
Step by step, it closed in on Victor, whose movements grew increasingly sluggish as his final reserves of energy faded. With the blood still pouring out, forming a literal lake around him, he couldn't even move anymore. He could only tremble and reach his hands forward, letting out faint moans and sobs, driven by the stress and terror that eventually moved him to tears.
A shadow suddenly enveloped him a second time. It was the same eyes—sadistic and evil. This time, it was all too real.
Victor collapsed, his cheek pressed against the floor, his breath heavy and his eyes half-closed—one nearly shut tighter than the other—as his heart rate slowed. Through the corner of his tear-filled eye, Victor saw only the monster's shadow, which seemed to loom larger as it drew closer. Its dark, sickening rattles intensified, a display of superiority as if to say, "You are nothing." And once again, Victor felt judged.
He didn't want to die. He absolutely didn't want to.
Yet there was nothing he could do. The creature was already preparing its lethal blow, aiming one of its smaller tentacles directly at his head, extending it and sharpening it into a blade, ready to reduce the boy to the same pulp it had made of all its victims.
Then, a powerful roar caught the creature's attention. It was suddenly attacked by a soldier wearing a Kariudo—heavily mutated and in some ways more unsettling than the creature itself. Only the soldier's silhouette remained vaguely human. The clash was brutal; the Ijo counterattacked with heavy strikes aimed at the head. However, the armor proved once again to be too resilient, suffering only a few dents as the soldier tried to shove the monster, attempting to hurl it against the wall.
Eventually, the Ijo gave way, falling backward onto the floor. From that point on, the Kariudo showed no mercy, tearing the creature apart with its bare hands. The monster shrieked in agony—loud, hysterical cries that sounded hauntingly human, even childlike—as it was butchered alive, piece by piece. The soldier ripped through entrails and tentacles, tossing them left and right like confetti, coating everything in blood and scraps of flesh. It gouged out eyes or crushed them until they burst, squeezing the demon's distorted body in a display of slow, bloody, and purely sadistic torture.
The Kariudo was quickly drenched in blood, turning from a matte dark gray to a vivid red that reflected the light from the ceiling, which had strangely begun to flicker as the soldier continued his assault.
Victor's hearing began to fade. The only thing he could hear just before closing his eyes was an intense, low humming, almost like a specific frequency.
Then, there was nothing but total silence.