Ethan couldn't feel his feet, somewhere back there—beneath a giant's crushed ribcage—his right foot had shattered. The bones had snapped like glass. Now it dragged behind him, more meat than limb.
One arm no longer moved, and half of his face was gone—peeled back to the bone. His breath came in raw, sucking gasps. Even after this, he was fighting with monsters one by one, and the remaining ones formed a big circle around him, watching and waiting for his fall.
His fingers could no longer close fully. The nerves had burned away, leaving only ghost twitches. His vision came in bursts—red, black, blur, flash. But the monsters never stopped appearing, so neither did he.
A colossus lumbered forward—one of the few remaining brave enough to try. Its chest was plated in scarred bronze scales, its face snarling beneath a crown of tusks.
He had no weapons. So he ran—limping, screaming. A ragged wraith charging the abyss.
The monster roared and swiped low to the ground. Ethan leapt toward him in thought to catch him, but he tossed into the air like flung debris.
Ethan twisted in mid-air and landed on its shoulder with a sickening crunch that he felt in his ribs again and again.
In the next moments, he stood up from the ground because fighting all this time without a break had made him feel no pain.
He made a low sprint at an unbalanced monster, made a slide throw under him, jumped onto his back, and started climbing onto his back with his only working hand.
He climbed up to his head and jammed his bare, shattered arm into his eyes. This made the monster in unbearable pain, so the monster howled louder and Ethan screamed louder while he pulled the monster's eye out of his body.
The eyeball came free, tethered to jelly and nerve. The colossus stumbled blindly into the jagged corpse of another, impaling itself on a snapped tusk.
Ethan slid off its corpse like rain on glass and hit the ground hard. He was bleeding from the mouth, ears, nose, and eyes. The gravely wounded areas on his body from all these fights are now clearly visible.
The last fifty remaining monsters encircled him. This time monster does not come one by one; they all come to him together, roaring, stomping, and striking.
And Ethan, he dove into it like a knife into a rot.
He pulled the chain from his ruined arm. His fingers were trembling because all his bone shards were lodged in his belt. One by one, he set them between his tendons of his left hand like clawed extensions.
The first monster he reached looked like a big mantis, all covered in fungal tumors and hydraulic limbs, slashed downward with a blade towards Ethan.
He ducked and plunged his hand into its gut and ripped upward, the bone claw on Ethan's hand tore through the monster's belly, green rot sprayed over him.
Another beast—a massive ram-headed reptile with vulture wings and crab legs—rammed him.
Ethan's bones cracked, and he rolled through the impact and stabbed his clawed hand into the thing's eye sockets.
Monster spasmed, and Ethan rode it down like a falling boulder and landed on its corpse.
More came: A scorpion-wolf hybrid with molten spines.
A three-legged deer-thing whose scream melted stone.
A serpent with hands for teeth.
With his hand, he wrapped around one's tusk and snapped it off to drove it into a gut. A second beast lunged—he headbutted it.
Impact of this attack, Ethan grabbed the monster's tongue and climbed into its mouth, and with his clawed hand came out from his back of his neck. The monster died instantly.
The other monster tried to crush him, and he let it, then exploded from its chest, covered in half-digested gore.
He was no longer fighting like a human to this point. He fought them in their own style.
Crushing windpipes, twisted joints until they tore free, gouged out hearts, and tore them from inside out.
To the monsters, he was a plague made of flesh who fought like a curse.
Only ten left.
His vision was almost gone, not feeling pain anymore, only heat.
The battle became a blur of horror.
Swinging the monster's own rib like a Warhammer, carving in the knees and dove beneath a stomping foot and bit through the tendon.
One fell.
Ethan used the monster's falling body to launch himself onto the next one.
In mid-air, a flying monster bit his leg, leaving him hanging by his leg, stuck in the monster's mouth. With all his strength, he pulls himself upward, and with his clawed hand, he cuts his jaw and frees his leg from the monster's mouth, and climbs towards his back, and with the chain he has with him, he chokes the monster's neck, making it crash into the group of monsters on ground.
To another monster, he killed it by headbutting it until it died.
His hand burned from acid. His lungs were torn from the smoke/deadly gases coming out from the dead monster bodies he had inhaled.
He grabbed one monster by its tail and pulled it back down, and bit its throat with his teeth. The other two tackled him at once. Ethan screamed and rolled with them, and shoved their heads together until their skulls caved in.
Only one remained.
Ethan stood in front of this last monster he had to fight, breath hitching, chest rising with exhaustion. His left arm hung broken, useless, limp. The chain rattled around his torso.
Across from him stood the final enemy.
Human height. Human frame. But nothing like human remains on his body.
Its face bore only a mouth—no eyes, no nose—just a wet, grinning slit that split ear to ear. Its tail swayed like a pendulum, jagged at the tip, stained red.
The air between them was thick with silence.
Then the monster moved.
It lunged—no sound, no warning. Ethan ducked low, spinning on his heel. The creature's claws tore past his face. He twisted, using the chain, wrapping it around the monster's wrist and yanking it sideways. Bone cracked. But the monster didn't scream—it just grinned wider.
Ethan roared, using the momentum to bring his clawed hand across the monster's ribs—slicing deep. Black ichor sprayed. The monster retaliated, ramming its forehead into Ethan's face. Blood burst from his nose. He staggered.
Then—snap—the tail whipped, coiling around Ethan's neck.
He dropped to his knees, claw scrabbling at the tail as it tightened. The creature stepped closer, mouth splitting wider, revealing rows of teeth spinning like gears.
Ethan's vision dimmed—but his fingers found the chain.
He yanked it, dragging the monster forward into a sudden knee to the gut. The tail loosened. He sucked in air, then slashed upward with the claw—raking it across the monster's torso.
The beast retaliated—punch to ribs. Elbow to face. Ethan blocked with the bone claw, locking its arm, and headbutted it square in the jaw. Again. And again. Blood and teeth rained down. Still, it stood.
So he bit it.
He bit its shoulder, tearing skin away with his own teeth.
It shrieked for the first time.
The tail came again, but this time he caught it under his arm and slammed his foot into its knee. The bone cracked sideways. He coiled the chain around the tail like a rope, pulled it taut, and flipped the monster over his back.
Dust erupted.
Ethan landed atop it, pinning it with his knee. He raised the claw.
"You're the last," he growled.
The monster opened its mouth and spat black acid.
Ethan turned his head just in time. It splashed across his shoulder, burning flesh. He screamed—but didn't stop. His claw came down once. Twice. Three times. The creature thrashed, kicking, scratching—but he drove the bone deeper, carving through chest and throat and spine.
Until it lay still.
And then—silence again.
He fell backward, staring at the sky. Only the chain rattled as he breathed.
Ethan had won.
A thousand monsters dead, and he still drew breath.
Only leaving the five commanders who did not move even an inch from the start.