Benny stumbled as the bugs' assault knocked him off balance. The pain of being hit by creatures the size of newborn children was overwhelming.
The roaches had started piling on top of him, and soon he was being overwhelmed completely. He could feel death's claws knocking at his door, trying to pull him down into the afterlife. But Benny could only struggle in desperate resistance.
He crawled forward while chunks of his skin were being bitten off. It was painful—God, it was painful—but the thought of dying was worse than the agony he currently felt. Trying to stand once more, he slashed wildly with his sword and stabbed out with the sharpened rat bones he'd made earlier. The movement was clumsy and slow, but it was better than nothing. He used the harder parts of the bones to bash at the roaches clinging to him.
It was effective enough, but he was still being overwhelmed by the sheer volume of enemies surrounding him.
He could feel his blood loss growing worse as missing chunks of flesh oozed and dripped from his body. His vision was beginning to fade, leaving him to rely purely on instinct to guide him back toward the sanctuary.
With each step, his legs felt impossibly heavy. The bugs piling on top of him added weight to his already malnourished and severely weakened frame. He could only curse himself in his thoughts, afraid to open his mouth in case the bugs crawled inside.
But maybe because he was so close to death, he felt his head begin to clear of unwanted thoughts. The voices that usually tormented him had all died down. How terrifying and peaceful it felt—he was ready to accept it all.
His body said otherwise, though. It was moving on pure survival instinct now. Even with the blood loss and his fading will to live, his body's survival mechanisms were keeping him going.
After what felt like an eternity, he collapsed on hard stone. No longer able to continue, his eyes faded to black.
He felt at ease now. Finally, he was at peace—or so he thought.
But it seemed he'd actually made it inside the sanctuary. Though he'd given up mentally, everything else had kept struggling. The next time he awakened, he'd discover that he'd actually survived.
As for the bugs that had been clinging to him, they were all dead—burned alive by a defense mechanism built into the sanctuary. It was designed to attack anything with hostile intentions within its zone of influence.
Benny had no idea this had happened. He'd only had a vague understanding of how the sanctuary might work, so he'd bet everything on that slim glimmer of hope he'd repeated in his head. Despite being weak-willed, he'd known that other mechanisms inside him would fight for survival even when his conscious mind gave up.
His survival was both a miracle and the result of a desperate gamble—one that by all rights shouldn't have paid off.
The sanctuary's stone floor was now littered with the charred remains of dozens of roaches, their alien faces frozen in final screams. Whatever ancient magic protected this place had recognized Benny as someone seeking refuge rather than conquest, while the creatures attacking him had triggered an immediate and lethal response.
Blood pooled beneath his unconscious form, seeping between the cracks in the ancient stonework. His breathing was shallow and ragged, but steady. The healing potion he'd consumed earlier had done what it could, but there were limits to what even magic could accomplish when someone was this badly mauled.
Hours passed in the sanctuary's eternal twilight. The light crystals continued their gentle glow, casting shifting shadows across Benny's motionless form. Whether he'd wake up at all was now entirely up to his body's ability to cling to life.
In the deeper parts of his mind, where consciousness flickered like a dying flame, Benny dreamed of sunlight and safety—things that felt impossibly distant in this underground hell. But his body kept breathing, kept fighting, kept refusing to give up even when his mind had surrendered completely.
Sometimes the weakest will can be carried by the strongest instincts.