The Demon Falcon was a creature I recognized very well. After all, it was the creature that was responsible for 95% of my deaths when I first started playing the game Tower of Babel.
With my knowledge of the game, I immediately knew that the falcon was gunning for me next. In that case, there was only one thing for me to do.
Run.
I stood and immediately picked up the pace. The heavy downpour showed no sign of stopping, but it was the least of my problems at the moment.
I shuffled through trees and the rough terrain, running blindly as I reviewed what I knew about the demon falcon.
The ranking systems for monsters in the Tower of Babel were as follows: servant, warrior, commander, monarch, and mythical rank.
The Demon Falcon was a servant-rank monster, the lowest rank possible, but that did nothing to reduce the danger it posed to starters. It was way faster than any challenger could be at the point in the game, meaning one could not hope to outrun it. Its eyesight was insanely good as well, so hiding was out of my options as well.
Like their name suggested, they were Falcons, so they enjoyed the hunt. The minute they marked someone as their prey, they would hunt the person till their last breath.
It was why when I played the game, after dying several times to the Demon falcon, I knew that encountering one meant that I wouldn't be able to reach the Sanctuary.
I had always restarted the game if such a scenario happened, but that wasn't the case now. I was no longer behind a screen where I could click the restart button. This was my reality, and there were no do-overs here. If I fell here, I would die. There were no two ways about it.
As I reviewed the information I knew about the Demon Falcon, there was only one option that I had at my disposal, and that was to kill this damn beast.
***
The heavy downpour showed absolutely no sign of stopping. Instead, it continued to fall with renewed vigor, each drop pelting my skin painfully. I moved through the forest as quickly as my feet would carry me, my soles slipping on mud.
At this point, I couldn't give a rat-ass about the cold. The adrenaline pumping through my veins had long since drowned out any sensation of temperature.
A loud screech suddenly split the air, and it suddenly dived at me. I slid to a stop at the base of a boulder, my chest heaving. It was a stroke of luck that I wasn't in my original body, or else I would have collapsed from exhaustion already.
Regardless, running was pointless. This damned game had taught me that much. The falcon would circle, wait for exhaustion to slow me, then strike. It must have used the same strategy on the previous challenger who was now lying dead in a pool of his own blood in that clearing. I knew the pattern like the back of my hand; after all, I'd died to it more than a hundred times.
Still, this wasn't a game, and one wrong move led straight to death.
I turned and scanned the terrain. The boulder rose, what, maybe fifteen feet? It was jagged and slick with rain. To my left was a cluster of thick-trunked trees, their branches tangled into a dense web, while to my right was an open ground, a clearing that sloped down toward a ravine I could hear but not see.
"Fuck!" I cursed under my breath.
There were no good options at all. Only varying degrees of bad options existed.
I took a deep breath, the cold air burning my lungs. After quickly assessing my options, I made my decision.
I chose the boulder. After all, height was the only advantage I could hope for against something that owned the sky.
I dug my fingers into the wet stone and started climbing. The rocks were jagged and bit into my hand, scraping skin and making me bleed, but I pulled myself up hand over hand until I reached a narrow ledge about twelve feet up. It was barely wide enough to stand on, but it gave me a view of the clearing below and the tree line I'd just come through.
I pressed my back against the rock face and waited.
The heavy downpour drummed against my skull, causing it to drip from my brow. I forced my breathing to slow and my hands to stop shaking. They were shaking partly from the cold but majorly from the weight of knowing what came next.
SCREEECHHHH!
The screech sounded ominously once again, and then it broke through the canopy.
The Demon Falcon was smaller than I remembered—no, that was wrong. The screen had always reduced the size of these beasts and made them manageable to us. They had been reduced to nothing but a threat you could quantify with health bars and damage numbers.
In reality, it was massive.
Its wingspan was wider than I was tall, and its dark feathers were a mixture of murky red and black. It was stained with dried blood. Its beak was a curved blade of bone, and its eyes were two red burning embers set in a skull built for killing.
It banked hard, its talons tearing through the branches below and sending splinters of wood flying in all directions before circling the boulder. It was watching and measuring, waiting for the moment I showed weakness before it struck.
I drew the only weapon I had, which was the hunting knife I'd found earlier. The blade was not exactly the best, and against a creature that could shred armor with its beak, it was barely better than nothing.
The falcon completed its circle, and then it came at me.
There was no hesitation in its movement. It came straight in, its wings folded and its red embers burning ominously.
I threw myself sideways off the ledge just as the talons closed on empty air. The impact of my body against the rock sent a spike of unbearable pain through my shoulder, but I caught a handhold and swung myself back onto the ledge as the falcon wheeled for another pass.
It was way faster than I remembered too!
My feet were barely set when it came again. This time I didn't dodge. The ledge was too narrow, and my balance was compromised. I dropped into a crouch and swung the knife upward as the falcon's talons raked across my arm.
The pain was immediate and blinding. Three lines opened from my shoulder to my elbow, the blood mixing instantly with the rain.
"SHITTT!" I screamed at the stinging pain, the sound torn from my throat before I could stop it. I was lucky this body was quite athletic, else I would have lost my life already.
Fortunately, my knife had found something too. Despite the poor visibility, I could see a glancing cut across the bird's leg that sent it shrieking past me, one of its wing clipping the rock hard enough to tear its feathers loose.
It was not deep, but it was enough to draw blood.
I pressed my left hand against the wounds, feeling the warmth of my own blood, and forced my eyes to track the falcon as it regained altitude.
I had hurt it. Not badly though—the cut was superficial at best, but it was bleeding. More importantly, it was angry.
SCREEEECCCHHHHH!
The falcon screeched angrily and then flew higher than before, disappearing into the rain filled darkness above.
I knew what that meant. It was preparing for the dive; the killing strike that had ended ninety-five percent of my runs.
I couldn't stay on the ledge or else I'd be a target painted against the rock, so I jumped.
The drop was twelve feet, and the landing was a chaotic tumble of mud and stone and screaming pain from my arm. I hit the ground rolling, came up on my knees, and sprinted for the heavy trees. Their branches were too thick and tangled for the falcon to follow easily. It would have to land and come to me.
I ran as fast as I could, but when I was about three strides from the thick forest, the falcon hit me from behind.
There was no warning whatsoever. It was like a truck rammed into me, and it drove me face-first into the mud, the knife flying from my hand.
I felt the talons dig into my back, piercing deep, and then the falcon was lifting—actually lifting me off the ground.
I screamed. I couldn't help it. The pain was beyond anything I could imagine, and it was like a red-hot wire was running from my spine out through every nerve.
Still, I wasn't dead yet.
I reached back with my good arm and grabbed the falcon's leg. The feathers were slick with rain and my own blood, but I held on. The bird was trying to fly higher now, fighting to gain height with my weight dragging it down. Its other leg came up, its talons slashing at my side and opening new wounds I felt only as distant pressure under the roar of adrenaline.
Then I found the knife.
It was still in the mud below, glinting faintly in the darkness, but I didn't reach for it. Instead, my fingers closed around a rock the size of my fist, embedded in the mud. I pulled it free, twisted in the falcon's grip, and swung.
The rock connected with the bird's leg just below the joint. I felt something give way, a crack that travelled up through my arm. The falcon shrieked, its grip faltering for a fraction of a second, but that was all I needed.
I instantly let go with my other hand, dropped back to the ground, and hit the mud like a sack. Air exploded from my lungs, and the world went white for a moment, then gray, before it slowly swam back into focus.
The falcon was on the ground. It had landed maybe ten feet away, one of its legs buckling under its weight, its wings half-spread and beating uselessly at the mud. Its burning embers were fixed on me, and even now, there was nothing in them but fury and hate.
I pushed myself up in pain. The knife was around five feet to my left, and the falcon was between me and it.
There was a brief moment of silence and focus as the rain stilled, then we moved at the same time.
I lunged for the knife while the falcon pushed itself forward on its good leg, beak snapping. My fingers closed around the hilt just as the beak came for my face. I rolled, felt the wind of the strike pass inches from my skull, and came up swinging.
The blade sank into the falcon's neck, but it wasn't deep enough!
SCREECCCHHHHH!
The beast screamed and twisted in pain, and the knife was torn from my grip, still embedded in its flesh.
Its blood sprayed black in the rain. It was impossibly dark, and the falcon's head whipped around furiously.
I had nothing left.
There was no weapon anymore. My arms were ribbons, and my back was a ruin of torn flesh. The cold I'd stopped feeling earlier was back, and a creeping numbness that I knew wasn't just from the rain had returned.
Still screaming in fury and hate from the pain, the falcon lunged furiously at me, but I caught its neck with both hands.
Its feathers were sharp, cutting into my palms, but I held on. The beak snapped inches from my eyes, close enough that I could smell the rot of its last kill. The bird's weight drove me backward into the mud, and we rolled around, a tangle of blood, feathers and blind desperation.
In the chaos, my hand found the knife that was still buried in its neck.
"I'M NOT GOING TO DIE HERE!!!" I screamed and pushed with all the strength I could muster.
The blade went deeper this time, through muscle and tissue, until the hilt pressed against the bird's flesh and there was nothing left to cut.
The falcon convulsed once, a violent shudder that ran through its entire body, and then it went still.
I lay beneath it, pinned by its heavy weight, staring up at the heavy rain falling endlessly from the black sky. The bird's black blood ran down my arms, warm against the cold, pooling in the hollows of my collarbone.
I pushed slowly, and the falcon's body rolled off me and landed in the mud with a sound I would remember for the rest of my life.
I lay there for a long moment, the downpour washing the blood from my hands and the heat from my body. My breath came in ragged gasps that hitched and stuttered with each new wave of pain.
I was alive.
A weak, disbelieving laugh escaped my lips.
"…I actually… killed it…"
At that moment, a sharp chime rang in my head, and a translucent golden screen appeared in front of my eyes.