White Turner's eyelids felt as though they had been forged from lead and bolted shut. Every breath was a strained negotiation with a ribcage that felt like a shattered puzzle, and the simple act of existing was a symphony of throbbing pain that vibrated through every nerve ending. He was a collection of bruises held together by sheer stubbornness. His memory was a flickering reel of disconnected images: the glint of a surgical knife, the roar of a two-headed monster, and his own desperate, clumsy lunge toward Jim Zecker with a stolen ice sword.
The silence that followed was heavy, draped in a suffocating chill that felt less like weather and more like the absence of life. White felt hollowed out, as if his very essence had been incinerated, leaving only a few glowing embers of consciousness to keep him from drifting into the void. Slowly, the "infinite karma" he boasted about—that vast, untapped reservoir he couldn't actually use—seemed to flicker, pushing back the tide of agony just enough for him to crack his eyes open.
The world came into focus as a blurred mosaic of crimson and silver. As his fingers brushed against the floor, they didn't meet the cold tile of a laboratory; they sank into something warm, viscous, and sickeningly familiar.
The smell hit him next—a gagging cocktail of iron-rich blood, the sharp sting of hospital disinfectant, and the underlying stench of decomposing organic waste. It was the odor of a slaughterhouse trying to pass itself off as a pharmacy. White dragged himself upward, his limbs trembling like those of a newborn animal, his hands slick with the "blood and flesh" of things that had once been living, breathing creatures.
When his vision finally cleared, White couldn't help but let out a ragged, whistling sigh of relief. The horror of the bunker had been transformed. He found himself in a literal graveyard of glass. Thousands of crystalline shards, some as small as needles and others as large as gravestones, were embedded in the walls, the floor, and the bodies of the fallen. The Chimera—those twisted, multi-limbed experiments of Zecker's—lay slaughtered, their bodies pinned under the weight of these white glass monoliths, as if a hero had decided to mark their graves with the very weapons of their destruction.
And there, at the center of the carnage, stood the hero.
Rust held the ice sword, but it was no longer the elegant, fragile blade it had been. It was encrusted with jagged glass fragments, making it look brutal and heavy, a weapon of execution rather than a tool of finesse. The blade was pressed firmly against the neck of the reptilian doctor. Zecker was pinned to a cross of glass, his green scales dull and matted with blood.
"We won. We won, right, Rust?" White called out, his voice cracking with a mixture of exhaustion and a manic, childish glee.
In White's eyes, this was the scene he had traveled to this world for. Despite the gore and the stench, his mind was already spinning the narrative. He didn't see a laboratory full of corpses; he saw a stage where the spotlight was meant for them. He looked at Rust—the boy who had spent his life digging through trash in the Dump Arena—and saw a legend in the making.
The "hero" seemed to hear the call. Rust stared into Zecker's eyes—eyes that were no longer wild with madness but filled with a terrifying, serene satisfaction—before delivering the final blow. The lizard's long, forked tongue stilled, and the "White Savior" prophecy that Zecker had obsessed over seemed to find its bloody conclusion.
Rust moved with a sudden, fluid grace, leaping across the field of corpses to catch White before he could collapse back into the blood. His eyes, once full of the frantic energy of a slum-dweller fighting for a scrap of food, were now weary and heavy, mirroring the "sleepy" state of a true master.
"That's right. We won,"-Rust said, though his voice lacked the triumph White expected. He looked at White, his features softening with relief, the murderous aura that had allowed him to dismantle an army of monsters evaporating into the cold air.
White babbled, his voice taking on the tone of a pirate who had finally unearthed a chest of gold. "You did it, Rust. You killed a wanted man. You'll be recognized as a Hero."
White's imagination was already running wild. He leaned his blood-soaked weight against Rust, laughing weakly. "We're going to tell this story all over the Dump Arena. Everyone will know the legend of the new hero. No one will ever dare steal our missions or our food again. We'll be kings of the landfill!".
Rust's gaze flickered away, avoiding White's shining, hopeful eyes. He looked up at the ceiling of the bunker, his mind a chaotic whirl of confusion. He didn't feel like a king; he felt like a fraud. In his memory, the battle hadn't been a glorious struggle. When he had finally awoken from the haze of the altitude sickness and the mental overload of Zecker's memories, the path had been laid out for him.
The ice sword had been placed right in front of him, as if waiting for his hand. And Zecker... the lizard hadn't fought back at the end. He had smiled. He had practically begged for the strike, goading Rust with insults and "prophecies" until the boy's Authority had flared in a defensive reflex. It felt less like a victory and more like he had played a role in a play written by a madman.
The glass shards he stepped on were small and fragile, crunching under his boots with a sound like breaking bones. He ground his heel onto the floor, hiding the pieces as if he could bury the truth of how easy it had been.
"Maybe we need to rest for a bit" Rust muttered, his voice hollow.
The elevator system was a mangled wreck, pierced through by a massive shard of glass. They were trapped for now in this basement of horror. White and Rust slumped back against two slabs of glass, a bizarre contrast to the "harmonious shades of green and orange" they had enjoyed in Zecker's living room only an hour before.
White didn't seem to notice the gloom. He continued to weave his tapestry of lies and legends, describing how Rust had single-handedly awakened his true power to defeat a legion of Chimera and a mad scientist. His voice was a bright, rhythmic chatter that filled the silence, a defense mechanism against the darkness that threatened to swallow them.
Rust sat there, the weight of the ice blade heavy in his hand. He wanted to tell White the truth. He wanted to say," White, actually, I..." He wanted to admit that he didn't feel like a hero, that he was still the same "loser of humanity" who had been kicked by Orcs in the dirt.
But the words died in his throat.
"So you really did it all by yourself, right?"
A new voice boomed from above, heavy and resonant, cutting through White's fantasies like a blade.
"So impressive. Do you two heroes need help getting out of here?"
Descending through the ruined ceiling, amidst a halo of artificial light and falling dust, was a figure that embodied the very concept of a Hero. He wore the green military uniform and the distinctive red beret of the northern heroes. His platinum-white hair caught the light, and his blue eyes, though weary, held a sharp, undeniable authority.
Nort Burningstar, the captain of the Silver Shooting Star Squad, landed softly amidst the sea of glass and blood. He looked at the two battered boys, then at the corpse of Jim Zecker, and finally at the "heroic" scene White had so desperately tried to believe in.
The atmosphere shifted instantly. The "cheerful" delusions of White Turner met the "gloomy," cold reality of a man who had seen too many "saviors" die in the mud.