This life had been a nightmare, an endless cycle of blood and despair with no way out.
Each passing day became a cruel reminder of his powerlessness, an invisible chain binding him to a relentless fate.
He had no choice but to accept the inevitable and fight, tooth and nail, for a survival that felt more like a punishment than a hope.
Even if he had stood face-to-face with God and hurled his rage, his pain, his pleas, God would not have listened.
God was nothing more than a distant spectator, an indifferent observer watching his suffering from an unreachable throne.
No matter how deep his despair, how deafening his cries, it would not have moved Him.
His silence was a verdict, a sentence that they, and they alone, had to carve their path through this hell.
Arceus was the sole architect of his fate, that vile, oppressive destiny crushing him under the weight of a mountain.
He would fight to the bitter end, until not a single breath of life remained in him, though every step on this path was paved with blood and sacrifice.
"Ahh!"
A scream tore through the silence. Blood, hot and thick, splattered against a white marble wall, leaving a crimson trail that slid slowly to the floor.
"Help!"
A severed hand, still twitching in its final spasms of pain, fell to the ground beside two eyeballs that rolled with a wet, grotesque sound, leaving a sticky trail of clotted blood.
"Ah!"
A man collapsed against the wall, his body sliding down to rest on the polished marble floor.
His head hung at a completely unnatural angle, and his hands, stretched toward the ground, trembled faintly, as if still clinging to the last traces of life slipping through his fingers.
An open, bleeding hole in his chest exposed the slick gleam of his internal organs, while half of his left leg was gone, torn off by some inhuman force.
Blood poured relentlessly from the wound in his chest and the stump of his leg, forming a dark pool that spread slowly.
Beside him, a rusted, notched sword was embedded in the ground, its blade stained with dried blood.
"N... No!"
The scream choked into a tragic gurgle. Further ahead, the scene grew even more gruesome and visceral.
Several bodies lay lifeless, scattered like broken dolls on a battlefield abandoned by the gods, devoid of hope.
The corpse of a blonde woman, split in half, lay in a pool of thick, clotted blood.
Her internal organs, exposed and mangled, spilled onto the cracked floor, mixing with the blood to form a horrific tapestry of flesh and bodily fluids.
A few steps away, the decapitated body of a man lay slumped, his arms outstretched as if he had tried to reach for something in his final moments.
Beyond, the man's head rested alone, its eyes wide open, frozen in a terrifying expression. Around it, more corpses lay in similar states.
Some had their torsos ripped open, others were mutilated in ways that defied imagination and human understanding.
The chamber where this senseless massacre unfolded was imposing in its architecture, with ceilings so high they seemed to vanish.
The white walls, adorned with intricate concentric circles and geometric patterns, evoked an advanced technological design forgotten by lost civilizations.
Yet now, those walls were defiled by splashes of blood that slid toward the floor.
"Aaaahh! Someone... Please help me!" screamed a woman with navy-blue hair, wielding a trembling spear in her right hand.
But her plea was in vain.
In an instant shorter than a blink, something too fast for the human eye tore off her left arm, and blood splattered her white tunic.
"Ugh! I don't want to die like this, so pathetically!" shouted a man in a tattered robe, his hood partially hiding his terrified face.
His hands unleashed arcs of blue lightning that shot toward the ground with tremendous force, aimed straight at the monster dominating the center of the chamber.
But his effort was futile. A thick, pale blue tail sliced through his waist without mercy, as if his desires and will to live held no weight in the balance of death.
Another man tried to flank the humanoid giant from the left, wielding two war hammers, each the size of a small table.
He was over forty, with a weathered face and prominent mustaches that gave him the air of a veteran hardened by a thousand battles.
His bare torso revealed a robust, sun-bronzed body, with incredible, chiseled muscles.
With an explosive shout, he spun like a destructive whirlwind, swinging his hammers with a force that seemed capable of leveling entire mountains.
But a pale blue scythe, as long as a cavalry lance, sliced half his face in an instant, and blood rained through the air as his body fell lifeless, like a felled tree.
"Damn it!" screamed another dying man, his words drowned in his own blood.
From the other flank, another scythe slashed down through the torso of an attacker who had fully charged his magical attack but never got the chance to unleash it before death claimed him.
All fell under the relentless fury of the monster's scythe-arms, sweeping through the chamber like a bloodthirsty tornado, reaping lives without discrimination or mercy.
Arceus watched the massacre from a distance. This was something he had seen his entire life. He had learned that in this world, only the fittest survived. Compassion was a luxury they could not afford.
"Don't break formation! That thing is specifically targeting those who stray from the main group!" he shouted, his gaze fixed on the monster dominating the chamber with its terrifying presence. "Don't let it move! KathyIn, now!"
KathyIn reacted instantly, thrusting her crimson sword into the marble floor.
A wave of icy energy surged from the blade as if they were at the South Pole, and the chamber's temperature plummeted abruptly, as if winter itself had stormed in to claim its dominion.
The ground around them was coated in a treacherous, gleaming layer of ice, trapping the monster's thick legs and long, scaly tail in a crystalline prison.
The creature, a colossus over three meters tall with translucent blue skin, froze in place, its lower torso encased like a nightmare statue.
In its right hand, stained with the blood of its victims, it held a severed human head, and from its forearm emerged a long, pale blue scythe.
"Hurry! I can't keep it immobilized like this for long, Raymond!" KathyIn shouted with urgency.
"Let's go, Eric!" Raymond responded.
Raymond was an imposing man, tall and robust, with sun-bronzed skin that seemed to have absorbed the sun's fury.
His long brown hair, swept back, contrasted with the shaved sides of his head, creating a bold style that amplified his presence.
His bare torso revealed a tattoo on his back: the silhouette of a majestic, ferocious golden tiger. His hands were enveloped in two glowing, crackling purple spheres of energy that cast electric sparks.
"Don't give me orders, idiot! I can handle my own business!" Eric snapped back.
Eric was a man with dark, weathered skin, his black, disheveled, braided hair hanging in uneven strands like dark serpents.
He wore a white tunic, now torn and stained with his own blood and that of others.
In his hand, he gripped a sword with a mesmerizing silver gleam, ready to slice through any obstacle.
In a single, synchronized move, Eric and Raymond launched themselves at the monster like human missiles.