CHAPTER 20: THE FINAL RESULT
The two mortal enemies locked eyes, beginning to circle one another in a slow, calculated prowl, gradually closing the distance within the monster's lair.
Though the crustacean-tentacle abomination’s outer bone carapace was actively mending from devouring its two cached carcasses, the newly fused plates bridging the structural fractures were incredibly fragile, thin as a human fingernail. Through the jagged, splintered fissures, Subject 198 could distinctly observe the raw, crimson-pink muscle strands twitching and contracting within the creature's body.
As they circled to close the perimeter, Subject 198 ran his analytical sub-routines to evaluate the tactical layout. A critical, fatal bottleneck had emerged: the monster's operational strike range was entirely too long. Its native bone tentacles already possessed a three-meter reach, and now, by tightly coiling its limbs around the six-meter petrified wood log, its total threat vector had expanded to a massive eight meters. Why eight meters instead of nine? His bio-processor computed that the beast was forced to sacrifice exactly one meter of tentacle length simply to wrap and anchor its grip around the timber shaft.
He simulated multiple tactical paths to disarm the target, such as launching targeted strikes to sever its grip and reduce its range, but his nodes rejected the viability of the maneuvers. Scanning meticulously, he noted that along every individual tentacle, the mutated, human-like teeth were biting and clamping down furiously into the petrified log—behaving exactly like the rigid tút spikes lining the sole of an athletic cleat to maximize localized friction. Stripping the weapon from its grasp was mathematically impossible; his solitary mechanical window demanded waiting for the abomination to hit absolute kinetic exhaustion. Continuously swinging a payload weighing several hundred pounds was a massive metabolic strain, and the beast's own muscle blocks were absorbing severe reaction torque from the wood. The damage ratio was completely lopsided: the monster would absorb roughly 200 points of wear, but if Subject 198 took a direct hit from that log, the kinetic transfer would deliver 800 points of structural trauma, pushing him to the absolute precipice of erasure. Evasion was non-negotiable.
Comprehending the variables, both hunters systematically converged. During this micro-stasis phase, the trauma across Subject 198’s three open craters began to stabilize. Erratic networks of congealed blood strands weaved together like a frantic mesh of surgical thread, packing the hollow voids with a fragile layer of clotted mass; yet his diagnostics verified that even the minor kinetic shockwave would instantly pulverize the makeshift patches back into open tears.
He could feel his auxiliary hand buried deep within his ruptured chest cavity, rhythmically compressing his primary heart; the organ was completely encased in clotted mass, anchored from both ends by hundreds of interlocking blood filaments. Sensing the cardiac muscles re-engaging their native contractions, Subject 198 coldly withdrew his hand from his thoracic cage, allowing the crimson threads to finalize their structural anchors.
The crustacean-tentacle predator, sensing that Subject 198’s somatic cells were executing a rapid recovery loop, refused to wait for the stalker to step into its pre-calculated threat zone. It initiated the assault, unleashing a full-power, sweeping strike with the eight-meter timber weapon.
Right at that exact micro-second, Subject 198 anticipated the kinetic vector, dứt khoát executing a complete consciousness merge with Pain. A volatile spike of pure, unadulterated madness detonated through his neural matrix, perfectly duplicating the feral trance that had fueled his very first slaughter of the hand-cluster species. His bio-CPU overclocked to a frequency that threatened to burn his cranial lining, releasing his high-density muscle filaments to fire at absolute capacity with zero safety constraints.
This raw somatic output—which under standard conditions would completely strip his outer skin and vaporize his nervous system—was now fully unleashed. From the absolute opening line of this deathmatch, Subject 198 had relied strictly on his baseline human ego to process the combat and absorb the trauma, consciously forcing his own mind to bear the raw weight of fracturing bones and hollow chest craters. He had systematically hoarded that pure torment to feed and multiply the manic hatred of Pain nested within his skull, storing the energy exclusively for this definitive micro-second of the harvest.
He lunged forward at a velocity that systematically demolished his own somatic framework. He could distinctly feel his Achilles tendons snapping under the torque, his quad muscle sheets tearing to ribbons, and his remaining outer chitinous skin sliding entirely off his frame. He vaulted high into the air, successfully clearing the horizontal trajectory of the oncoming stone timber. However, this explosive sải bước initialization permanently paralyzed both of his primary lower legs, leaving them hanging limp as his frame coasted through the upper canopy.
Sailing through the air directly above the predator, the abomination’s reflexes proved impossibly sharp. It forcefully altered the momentum of the multi-hundred-pound log mid-swing, driving the weapon skyward to intercept Subject 198’s aerial trajectory and hammering the payload directly into his chest.
The collision delivered the absolute entirety of the log's thousand-pound kinetic energy straight into his frame, inflicting a cataclysmic tier of total somatic failure. His entire skeletal system, his dense muscle sheets, and his visceral organs were completely pulverized down to individual cellular fragments, triggering immediate, widespread internal hemorrhaging beneath his plates. Every internal mechanism within his torso was reduced to paste.
Yet, the trauma unfolded precisely according to Subject 198's strategic algorithm. He registered a massive, volatile surge of raw energy radiating outward from his stomach; prior to launching his aerial descent and connecting with Pain, he had forced Silas to swallow the absolute entirety of his final 20-kilogram compressed energy bar. This was his supreme operational contingency file if his evasion sub-routines failed.
The immense nutrient payload from the 20-kilogram brick detonated through his mangled system, launching a hyper-accelerated metabolic cascade. It mended his shattered bone structure, filled his three open craters, and stitched his pulverized organs back together at a velocity so extreme it felt as though his biology was instantaneously sprouting entirely new chi appendages rather than repairing old cells. Hoarding the emergency ration as a hidden ace card until this exact micro-second had successfully preserved his life.
Behaving like a descending artillery shell, Subject 198 used the monster’s own upward impact force as a counter-leverage propulsion vector, rocketing straight back down toward the target. The crustacean predator scrambled aside in a frantic attempt to evade the trajectory, and Subject 198 slammed brutally into the earth with a resonant, crushing thud. The kinetic impact pulverized his framework once more, but the volatile energy bar payload forcefully đùn-ed fresh tissue to rebuild his stance in a fraction of a second.
Subject 198 glared at the abomination, his open eyes flaring into a manic, psychotic grin. Part of the reaction was fueled by the unhinged chemical rush of the madness, but part rose from the mathematical reality that he had successfully breached the predator's perimeter, closing the gap to a mere two meters. The monster attempted to contract its tentacles to swing the massive log a secondary time, but its reaction window had closed. Abandoning his previous defensive calculation of letting the beast tire itself out, Subject 198 funneled the absolute maximum output into his four newly synthesized legs, launching himself straight at the enemy like a high-velocity cannonball. The predator’s cognitive nodes failed to calculate the impossible acceleration.
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Extending his primary upper hand, he drove his fingers deep into the raw, unarmored tissue crater he had carved into its main tentacle during the previous cycle, locking a vice grip around the structural tear before driving both of his upgraded mallets forward with a kinetic force equivalent to a micro-artillery blast.
Thud! Thud!
The primary impact detonated against the wound with a sickening crunch. The newly synthesized, paper-thin carapace shielding the monster's tissue was instantly reduced to powder, and the blunt force cut cleanly through the muscle filaments to shatter the underlying cylindrical bone pipeline. A fraction of a second later, the secondary mallet hammered the exact same coordinate, crushing the old structural fracture until the tissue core resembled liquid mush. Subject 198 channeled his final reserve into a conclusive, tàn bạo smash, and the five-meter limb literally sheared away from the beast's core.
Thud!
The primary tentacle was completely severed from the abomination's torso, spraying a violent fountain of dark fluid across the clay.
The offensive sequence executed with such supersonic frequency that the crustacean-tentacle beast was left entirely incapable of executing a motor countermeasure, merely throwing its head back to unleash a piercing shriek of extreme tissue agony.
The intense reaction torque of the destruction hurled Subject 198 two meters backward, slamming his broken frame into a deep depression in the dirt, wiping out his consciousness instantly. Yet right at the micro-second of expiration, Pain intercepted the motor slots, driving his shattered limbs right back into the offensive to sustain the combat momentum.
The moment the monster stabilized its tracking, it retaliated with immediate, feral fury. It coiled its six remaining bone-clad tentacles into a singular, massive flesh club, whipping the asset forward to deliver a cataclysmic strike that reduced Subject 198 back into a liquid mass of mangled tissue. But the paste effortlessly re-solidified, driven by the near-infinite vitality reserves of the 20-kilogram core. According to Subject 198’s residual memory files, his skull had been entirely pulverized by the blow, yet under the chemical insulation of the manic trance, both he and Pain continuously threw their frame back into the meat-grinder.
This was the exact strategic variable that dictated preserving Pain’s activation until this phase: they were actively cycling operational control between two distinct minds to sustain a continuous offensive. Executing combat loops at this level of trauma triggered severe neural shock capable of inducing permanent stasis every few seconds; both consciousnesses were required to alternate control of the motor pathways to prevent total system shutdown, particularly given how hyper-sensitive their new nervous system was to the raw sensory feedback of pain.
Concurrently, Subject 198 and Pain sustained their frantic offensive, continuously charging the predator only to be repeatedly reduced to splinters by the bone club. He abandoned his attempts to target the beast's core, focusing his mallets strictly on bludgeoning the remaining tentacles one by one, fracturing their carapaces and crushing the muscle lining until the limbs hung flaccid and paralyzed.
Five continuous minutes dissolved within this absolute meat-grinder, a repetitive cycle of neural blackouts followed by instantaneous tissue mending. There were instances Subject 198 awoke to find his frame face-down in the mud, instances his eyes snapped open mid-sprint toward the enemy's flank, and instances he found his fingers actively locked around a swinging tentacle that was actively crushing his chest. He simply sustained the output, accepting structural demolition to deliver localized trauma.
The calcified abomination was locked in an identical tier of absolute systemic ruin. More than three of its primary tentacles had been entirely reduced to shattered, useless strands of flesh by his mallets; the remaining limbs had escaped catastrophic failure strictly because Subject 198 adhered to the absolute rule of concentrating his entire kinetic output onto a solitary limb until it collapsed before shifting his targeting matrix.
Ten full minutes evaporated within the clearing.
The passive vitality current generated by the compressed energy bar inside Subject 198's stomach was entering total depletion, the tissue mending velocity dropping drastically. But the predator's biological status was infinitely worse; it was reduced to a mere pair of functional tentacles to maintain its perimeter. Through its human-toothed eyes, a pristine, unmistakable wave of primitive terror burned as it stared at the immortal nightmare before it, yet Subject 198 pressed the offensive without a single fraction of mercy.
Twelve minutes, twelve seconds.
Subject 198 lay paralyzed across the crimson sand, both his conscious mind and Pain hovering on the absolute verge of terminal black out. Diverging completely from their peak status where cell division occurred in micro-seconds, his biology was now forced into a sluggish, agonizingly slow regeneration filter, requiring nearly ten full seconds of static rest on the mud simply to compile enough mechanical force to drag his frame forward. The abomination resting adjacent to his stance was a matching wreck, its shattered tentacles hanging limp and unstrung, its kinetic output entirely drained.
Subject 198 dragged his rệu rã mass, rolling his frame directly over the mangled torso of the crustacean beast. His frame was completely ruined, leaking thick pools of human blood across the clay, his energy matrix depleted to a point where it could no longer seal the hollow craters defiling his skin.
Beneath his stance rested his mortal enemy—the five-meter crustacean-tentacle abomination. Unlike the baseline variants that automatically expired once their hand clusters were pulverized, this creature's core vital signs remained active, its chest thoi thóp contracting as it sought to wild-vùng vẫy its frame, yet its motor nerves were completely scorched, rendering its anatomy an immobile prison. Subject 198 stared down into its human-toothed maws; his calculations verified that even if the beast harbored an absolute intent to execute him at this micro-second, it possessed zero physical capacity to deliver the strike.
Opening his three remaining bloodshot eyes to scan the mangled prize beneath him, his processor delivered the final, cold diagnostic:
“It is on the verge of death.”
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(End of Chapter 20)
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✍️ AUTHOR'S NOTE:
I am planning to let this battle decide who will be the main character for the next part of this story: the crustacean-tentacle monster or Subject 198. I really want to try this unique plot experiment out because, you know, it doesn't always have to be Subject 198 who survives to the very end, right? So I want you—yes, the reader right now—to leave a comment. Should the crustacean-tentacle beast or Subject 198 be the main character moving forward? Your votes will directly influence my decision for the upcoming chapters!