Vedant looked at the tapir, his initial thought was that it would be an easy kill. It wasn't a very big creature. But as soon as it saw him, the tapir charged with surprising speed and vigor. Vedant kicked the creature with ease, then slashed it with his katana. He hadn't yet mastered the blade, so the slice wasn't very effective, but he figured it couldn't survive more than two or three more hits like that.
"How did the receptionist die to something so weak?" he wondered. Little did he know, a much greater, more monstrous foe lurked in the shadows.
Rushing toward the cafeteria, he found the chef's body. The sight was far more terrifying than the thought of being eaten by a tapir. The chef's body had been gruesomely dismembered, as if he had been sacrificed to the beast. The sight made Vedant retrace his steps, and he screamed in fear, a sound that drew a pack of tapirs toward him. He quickly counted them—eleven in total.
"Come on, I'm not dying to such low-level creatures!" he taunted. "Bring me the boss!"
He charged toward them, swinging his sword, which sliced through the tapirs, dividing one into two clean halves. He seemed to be improving his swordsmanship rapidly, in a very short amount of time. But in his overconfidence, something hit his head. He thought it was another tapir, but it was just a broken tile that had fallen from the floor above. "Broken tiles?" he muttered. "What could have broken them? It couldn't have been these mere tapirs."
He sliced through the rest of the tapirs, using a new strategy: kill, dodge, run, and repeat. Soon, he found himself outside the hotel. The area was a plain, flat garden with a 75-meter radius. He noticed that the receptionist's body he had seen earlier had disappeared. "Something's wrong," he thought. "There are more than just these tapirs."
Just as the thought crossed his mind, his feet faltered, and a shiver ran down his spine. He saw a giant tapir with horns, though it looked more like a mixture of a tapir and a wild boar. It stood over eight feet tall, its face covered in blood, and its horns were a deep red, like the color of the scarlet moon. Vedant was frozen, his brain unable to process what was in front of him. What could he possibly do to that monster?
But this wasn't the time for thinking, it was the time for action. He gripped his katana and rushed at the giant beast, trying to slice it, but his attack left barely a scratch. The monster sent him flying a floor's height into the air. When he landed, the impact didn't hurt much, but the blow he took was immense. He figured he could take five more blows at most before he would be finished.
He tried a new, more strategic approach. The tapir charged, and just as it was about to hit him, he dodged and sliced it again, this time a stronger but still shallow cut. He remembered that a tapir's weakness was its underbelly, below its back. He made a powerful blow, successfully landing a hit that made the beast bleed. But he himself took another blow, one far greater than he could give. He knew he couldn't defeat this monster with a simple katana.
He ran back toward the hotel, remembering that there was more than just the katana in his room—there was dynamite. It was often used for clearing stones and forests. He sprinted with all his might, grabbed the dynamite, and took the matchbox from his room. He could hear the tapir rushing behind him, destroying everything in its path. Vedant ran to the terrace, reaching the top just as the tapir began to destroy the walls of the hotel, trying to make him fall. The structure was slowly starting to crumble.
Without a second to spare, Vedant lit the fuse, aimed, and threw the dynamite at the tapir. "Bye, bye," he said.
The dynamite exploded with a great force, destroying half of the hotel and collapsing the floor where he stood. The whole area went black and white for a moment, and a sharp, ringing sound pierced his ears. He was barely ten meters away from the explosion.
When he opened his eyes, he saw destruction all around him. But it wasn't enough. The tapir was still alive, though barely. So was Vedant. Both were on their last breath. It would be the end of one of them today. But which one? The next move would decide.