The smell of ozone and burning fat hung heavy over the muddy clearing. Rain had stopped hours ago, leaving the tropical air thick enough to swallow a man whole, yet the heat radiating from Norris's severed head was completely unnatural. Crimson sparks still skittered across his open neck, sizzling as they met the wet moss below.
Lifeless stood motionless, his boots sinking into the black soil. He looked down at the face that had defined his entire existence. The jaw was slightly slack, the eyes wide and clear, staring upward into the dense canopy of the rainforest with a frozen, mocking grin. There was no peace in that face. There was only the residual satisfaction of a lunatic who had played his hand perfectly.
Beside him, Jarvis stood with his arms crossed, his massive frame casting a long shadow across the dirt.
He remained completely quiet, his internal bio-current humming at a low, steady frequency that vibrated through the humid air.
Lifeless felt a strange, conflicting pressure building behind his ribs. He felt impressed. He felt shocked. The sheer scale of the deception was a heavy weight in his chest. Norris was a psychopath. He had not been a savior. He had looked at a wandering, broken boy and decided that Lifeless was his ultimate, entertaining match. Every piece of shelter, every harsh training session under the burning sun, every meal shared in the quiet hours of the night, it had all been a lie. It was nothing more than the careful cultivation of an opponent.
Norris had orchestrated his own demise, making a horrific deal with a divine beast to give it a meal that could feed it for months, all so it would fake his death. He wanted Lifeless to drown in hatred. He wanted that hatred to warp the boy's biology, to shatter the neural limits of the Muzzle, to force a regular human body to manifest raw power just to create a better fight.
The realization settled into Lifeless's bones, cold and heavy. His fingers twitched against his sides, his nails digging into his palms until the skin split, letting tiny beads of dark blood drip onto the mud.
"I'm going to kill every single animal there"
The words left his mouth like pieces of broken glass. His voice was flat, stripped of all rhythm, carrying only the absolute finality of an execution order.
Jarvis shifted his weight, the wet ground groaning under his boots. He looked toward the deep, impenetrable green of the rainforest ahead, where the shadows seemed to move with a life of their own.
"do you want people to idolize you in Finland?"
Lifeless turned his head slowly, his gaze locking onto Jarvis. His expression was a blank wall, masking the hollow vacuum that had opened up inside his mind.
"yes, I was never seen"
He had lived in the dark for too long. He had been a phantom, a tool, a nameless entity moving through the fringe of the world. To be known, to be feared, to be elevated to something undeniable, it was the only thing that could fill the space Norris had left behind.
Jarvis grunted, his hand moving to a heavy leather pouch at his waist. He stepped forward, closing the distance between them with two heavy strides.
"cut the drama and take this"
Before Lifeless could move, Jarvis slammed his palm against the center of the boy's chest. A sharp, stinging pain flared through Lifeless's sternum as small, metallic hooks bit deep into his flesh, anchoring a small, matte-black square directly over his heart. A tiny, unblinking crimson light flickered to life on the surface of the device.
Lifeless looked down, his breath hitching as the metal settled against his skin.
"what is this"
"it's a camera, your pov is live. People are watching your performance live"
Jarvis stepped back, his face completely unreadable. The crimson light cast a faint, rhythmic glow over the bloodstains on Lifeless's torn shirt. The world was no longer hidden. Every broken bone, every drop of sweat, every ounce of suffering was about to become public property.
Lifeless touched the edge of the device, feeling the faint vibration of its internal battery against his ribs. He looked up at the towering trees ahead, then back to the giant beside him.
"are you coming with me?"
Jarvis pulled a long, heavy blade from his back, the polished metal catching the dim light filtering through the leaves.
"let's go"
They stepped over the severed head of their former master, leaving the clearing behind as they plunged into the suffocating green of the rainforest.
The jungle did not welcome them. It was a dense, living labyrinth of twisted roots and razor-sharp ferns. Within minutes, the ambient noise of the wilderness changed. The regular chatter of birds and insects vanished, replaced by a tense, heavy silence that always preceded predators.
A pack of native jackals, their fur matted with dried mud and their eyes glowing with a faint, unnatural yellow hue, burst from the undergrowth. They did not hesitate. They lunged through the air, jaws snapping.
Lifeless did not use his hands. He moved with a cold, mechanical efficiency, his legs sweeping through the air with enough kinetic force to shatter bone. His boot caught the lead jackal directly in the ribcage, the impact sounding like a dry branch snapping. The animal collapsed instantly, its lungs collapsing under the pressure. Behind him, Jarvis's blade moved in a silent, silver arc, cleanly dividing two more of the beasts before they could touch the ground.
They kept walking, their pace steady, their breath synchronized. Every creature that crossed their path became a target. Wild boars with tusks elongated by genetic mutation charged from the shadows, only to be met with heavy, downward strikes that drove them into the dirt. Exotic birds with plumage like liquid fire attempted to dive-bomb them from the upper canopy, but Lifeless tracked their trajectories with perfect precision, swatting them out of the air with open-palm strikes that burst their internal organs.
Blood pooled in their footprints, a mixture of dark crimson and the pale, translucent fluid of mutated beasts. The crimson light on Lifeless's chest remained steady, broadcasting the relentless slaughter to an invisible audience across the globe.
The trees grew taller, their trunks twisting together like massive pillars holding up a green sky. The air became thick with the scent of rotting vegetation and iron.
A sudden, violent tremor shook the ground. The ferns to their right violently parted, and a massive shape hurtled toward them.
It was a child of divinity, a baboon of monstrous proportions, its shoulder height perfectly matching Lifeless's own stature. Its fur was a coarse, silvery grey, and its face was a mask of dark blue skin, dominated by two massive, yellow fangs that protruded from its lower jaw. The air around the beast seemed to ripple with a faint, kinetic pressure.
The baboon slammed its fists into the earth, throwing a massive wave of mud and rock directly at them.
Lifeless reacted instantly. He planted his heels, his internal bio-current surging into his thighs as he threw his hands forward to intercept the beast's charge. The impact was deafening.
The sheer weight of the baboon drove Lifeless backward, his boots plowing two deep trenches through the wet earth. The animal was still stronger. Before Lifeless could shift his stance, the baboon unleashed a short, brutal punch that caught him squarely in the chest, right beside the camera.
The force of the blow sent Lifeless flying through the air, his back slamming into a massive cedar trunk. The bark shattered on impact, and a dull ache spread across his shoulder blades.
He slid to the ground, coughing up a small spray of dark fluid. He looked up, his vision swimming for a fraction of a second before locking back onto the giant primate.
"is there any weak spot in this animal"
Jarvis didn't move from his position, his eyes scanning the beast's aggressive stance.
"punch it in it's throat"
The baboon didn't give them time to coordinate. It charged again, its knuckles dragging along the ground, tearing up the turf as it accelerated.
Lifeless pushed himself off the tree, his muscles screaming as he forced his bio-current to concentrate in his right fist. He waited until the beast was within two meters, its foul breath hitting his face, before lunging forward with a straight thrust aimed directly at the soft cartilage of its throat.
The baboon was deceptively fast. It tilted its head downward, absorbing the punch on its thick, bony brow. The impact sent a painful vibration back up Lifeless's arm, cracking the small bones in his knuckles. Before he could pull his hand back, the baboon's jaws snapped shut, its fangs burying deep into the meat of his left forearm.
Lifeless screamed, a raw, animalistic sound that tore through his throat. The pain was immediate and blinding, a searing heat that traveled straight to his nervous system.
He threw his right fist into the side of the animal's head, trying to force it to release its grip, but the baboon held on, its eyes rolling back in a frenzy of primitive violence. With a savage twist of its neck, the beast tore its head away, taking a massive chunk of flesh and muscle from Lifeless's shoulder with it.
Blood erupted from the wound, coating Lifeless's left side in a brilliant, warm crimson. He stumbled backward, his breath coming in ragged, shallow gasps. The camera on his chest was covered in red droplets, the lens painting the live broadcast in the color of his own agony.
The baboon swallowed the flesh, its yellow teeth stained red, its chest heaving as it prepared for the final strike.
Lifeless looked at his torn shoulder. The white of the bone was visible through the shredded muscle. A toxic shame washed over him, a burning anger that felt dangerously similar to the rage Norris had cultivated inside him. He refused to be weak. He refused to die in the dirt like an abandoned animal.
He forced his bio-current to spark, the internal ions moving at a frantic, unstable pace through his nervous system.sparks began to leak from his pores, his skin turning a deep, feverish pink as his internal temperature surged. He charged forward, his boots leaving charred marks on the grass.
The baboon met him halfway, throwing a massive, sweeping hook that could have decapitated a lesser man. The blow caught Lifeless across the jaw, sending a violent spin through his vision, but he did not stop his momentum.
He used the momentum of the strike to slip inside the beast's reach. His hands moved like striking serpents, his fingers hooking into the thick fur around the baboon's neck as he activated the shadow technique.
The dark, suffocating energy of the technique flowed from his palms, wrapping around the beast's throat like an invisible, crushing iron collar. The baboon's eyes widened in sudden, primordial terror. It tried to bring its hands up to tear Lifeless away, its massive claws digging into his ribs, ripping through the skin, but Lifeless held on with the grip of a dead man.
"come on die already"
He poured every ounce of his remaining energy into the choke, his muscles locking as he forced the shadow technique to compress the animal's windpipe and sever the flow of blood to its brain. The baboon's movements grew frantic, its legs thrashing against the mud, its massive chest expanding violently as it fought for air that would not come.
Slowly, the resistance began to fade. The claws digging into Lifeless's ribs lost their strength, sliding down his torso leaving long, bloody tracks. The baboon's massive head sagged forward, its yellow eyes rolling back into its skull until only the whites were visible.
The beast collapsed into a heavy, unmoving mound of grey fur.
Lifeless released his grip and fell backward into the mud, his chest heaving violently. His left arm was completely useless, the shredded shoulder leaking blood into the pool of water beneath him. Jarvis walked over, standing above him, looking down at the damage with a critical eye. He did not offer a hand. He simply reached into his pack, pulled out a roll of coarse, grey fabric, and tossed it onto Lifeless's chest.
"bind it before you bleed out, we still have miles to go"
Lifeless grunted, using his teeth and his one working hand to wrap the fabric tightly around his shoulder, ignoring the white-hot agony that flared through his body with every turn of the bandage. The crimson light of the camera continued to blink, capturing his ragged breathing and the steady drip of blood from his chin.
They did not stop to rest. As soon as the bleeding slowed to a dull seep, Jarvis turned and continued deeper into the rainforest, and Lifeless forced himself to his feet to follow.
The deeper regions of the jungle were completely silent, devoid of regular life. The only creatures that remained were the fulminated animals, beasts that had absorbed the residual divinity of the forest, their bodies crackling with erratic, internal currents.
A group of large, feline predators with skin like cracked volcanic rock emerged from the roots of a giant banyan tree. Their movements were jerky, unnatural, their muscles twitching with electrical discharge.
Despite his injuries, the fights became strangely easy for Lifeless. The rage from the baboon fight had left his nervous system in a heightened state of sensitivity. He could feel the movement of ions in the air before the felines even struck. When the first one leaped, its paws crackling with blue lightning, Lifeless simply leaned his torso five centimeters to the left, letting the beast pass by before driving his heel down into its spine, using its own electrical charge to fry its nervous system.
Jarvis moved beside him like a heavy machine, his blade cleaving through the stony skin of the predators with rhythmic, effortless swings. They moved through the pack like reapers through wheat, leaving a trail of smoking, static-filled carcasses behind them.
The sky began to darken, the heavy green canopy turning into a solid black ceiling as the sun dipped below the horizon. The heat did not leave the forest; it became damp, heavy, and suffocating.
Jarvis stopped beneath an ancient mangrove tree, its roots rising ten feet out of the ground like giant wooden fingers. He looked up into the sturdy, thick branches thirty feet above.
"we sleep up there, the ground belongs to the night hunters"
Lifeless didn't answer. He used his one good arm to pull himself up onto the lowest root, his boots slipping on the slick moss before he found purchase. Slowly, painfully, he hauled his broken body up into the high branches, finding a wide, flat fork where the wood was thick enough to support his weight.
Jarvis followed, settling into a parallel branch with the easy grace of someone who had spent a lifetime surviving in the wild.
Lifeless leaned his head against the rough bark, his eyes staring blindly into the darkness. His body was on fire, the internal fever from breaking his limits humming a low, painful tune through his veins. The camera on his chest remained active, its tiny red light casting a faint, consistent pulse over his face in the pitch black of the jungle night. He closed his eyes, letting the heavy, wet sounds of the rainforest swallow his consciousness.
The transition from night to day was sudden. There was no gentle dawn; the sun simply pierced through the heavy mist like a hot iron, turning the damp jungle into a steaming oven within minutes.
Lifeless opened his eyes, his muscles stiff and frozen. The bandage on his shoulder had dried into a stiff, black crust, locking his arm in a semi-bent position. The fever had receded slightly, leaving his mouth dry and his tongue thick.
Below them, the jungle floor was covered in a thick layer of white fog that curled around the roots like smoke.
Jarvis was already awake, leaning against the trunk, sharpening his blade with a small, grey stone. The rhythmic scritch-scritch of the metal was the only sound in the morning air.
"get up, the sun is high"