Chapter 66: There Stands Victor

Chapter 66: Chapter 66: There Stands Victor

No more memories, no more monsters. Victor held Brika tightly in his arms as they floated through the darkness, because losing her meant losing his own life.

He wasn’t entirely aware of what he was doing. He was hugging the little goblin with such desperation that she stared at him with a confused expression. However, strangely enough, she returned the embrace, holding him tightly as she rested her forehead against the chest of that human.

"Finally..." Victor whispered. "We’re finally together again."

"You’re exaggerating way too much," Brika replied. "Even if you rescued me, you’re forgetting that this is all happening inside your mind. Did you even think about what would happen after you found me?"

"I’ll figure something out. And before you say we’re all going to die, there’s still something we need to take care of."

Brika looked into the darkness, following Victor’s gaze. There, in the depths of the blackness, the Wendigo’s demonic eyes stared directly at them.

"You did it, Goggles," the monster said with a laugh full of satisfaction. "You overcame my game better than I expected, and I didn’t even design it to be that easy."

Victor growled. He had expected that damn lunatic to play dirty.

"However, there’s still something you left behind."

Outside Victor’s mind, those monsters connected by hair disintegrated and were absorbed by each individual strand.

At the same time, the monsters that had been chasing Victor for some time manifested in the darkness, extending their sinister limbs through the void.

’Damn it,’ Victor thought.

He let go of Brika, but didn’t release her hand, afraid of losing sight of her in the darkness.

"This is a memory I want to preserve for posterity," Richard Graves commented. "A bloody battle inside someone’s mind... Who will win? Let’s see what your mind is made of, Goggles, because now I’m going to test your mental strength!"

The darkness shattered like glass, leaving behind a blank space where both Initiates could stand. All around them, the shadows rose like waves from a lost memory, threatening to erase their very existence.

Victor clenched his teeth. He felt as though his rage might set him ablaze at any moment, but he managed to hold it back when he felt Brika slip her hand out of his grasp and begin walking toward the monsters.

She took a few steps, then stopped and closed her eyes.

The floating eye silently accompanied her, and together they watched the end of their lives unfold. Victor clenched his fist tightly. In here, he was just an ordinary human, without any remarkable abilities that could help him survive, so all he could do was resign himself to death.

However, he couldn’t accept that. His life had been hanging by a thread ever since he arrived in the first scenario, and he had survived all the way to this moment. All the wounds he had suffered and every time he had endured pain just to survive one more day couldn’t have been for nothing.

He slowly moved forward until he was beside Brika, but instead of stopping, he picked up the pace. She watched him head straight toward the shadows, confused, but soon her eyes widened in shock and fear, because the way Victor was advancing reminded her of something very important.

"Come and get me, you damn monsters!" Victor shouted, now running toward the shadows.

He didn’t stand a chance. Not even close. But as long as he had a pair of fists to punch with, teeth to bite with, and a pair of legs to run with, he would pursue survival above all else.

And so, he threw himself headfirst into the shadows. He raised his fist and landed a punch on the first one, but the second shoved him with a slap, the third kicked him, and the fourth laughed at him. Against all odds, Victor got back up and charged into the attack once again.

Brika’s expression darkened. On a stormy night, many goblin soldiers had fought with everything they had, exactly the same way Victor was fighting now. It had all been for survival, but there was something those soldiers lacked that Victor possessed.

[Cogito, ergo sum,] said the eye, rising into the air as it tried to reach Victor.

That was what Victor demonstrated every time he fought. The roars of that human echoed through the white void. The shadows were beating him to a pulp, but every time they knocked him down, he got back up just to keep fighting.

Blood splattered across the white ground. Victor’s shouts of rage and desperation soon turned into gasps of pain. And yet, he got back up again.

He cursed the gods. He cursed the Wendigo. He cursed everyone except himself, because deep in his heart, he didn’t believe any of this was his fault, even if some of the mistakes had been his own. If there was anyone to blame, it was those who watched comfortably from the heavens.

So what if he had trusted the wrong person?

So what if his own stupidity had nearly gotten him killed?

It was the fault of those bastards who sought to hurt him!

As long as he still had breath in his lungs, he would fight those damn bastards, because this was his life, and his life wasn’t a show or a toy for others to enjoy themselves with!

Brika could see it in Victor: the very hope the goblin soldiers had lacked on the battlefield. While they marched forward with gloomy thoughts about the future, there stood Victor, wishing with all his heart for a better day than the one before.

Even if he was knocked down, he would get back up. Even if his body became a mangled lump of flesh, he would find a way to crawl toward his destiny, a destiny filled with impossibilities.

That was the power of the Wheel of Fortune.

Brika hesitated, but then she moved forward. Before she even realized it, she was already running toward the shadows to help Victor fight, while up in the sky, that eye continued repeating the same phrase.

[Cogito, ergo sum.]