I swallow hard, placing my hand on the cold knob of room 803. A wave of unease rises in my stomach like acrid bile.

  Click.

  The first thing that smacks me in the face is the metallic tang of rusted iron, so thick I feel like I can taste it on the tip of my tongue.

  On the rotting wooden floor, a middle-aged man lies curled up. His elegant suit is torn to shreds and stained a gruesome crimson. And most horrifying of all, his left arm is gone. Only a stump remains, crudely bandaged with a strip of torn shirt.

  "Help... help me..." He wheezes upon seeing us, his eyes glazing over from pain and blood loss. But immediately after, his pupils contract in terror. "Don't... don't come any closer! Don't let them smell you!"

  Xiaolang, currently in his gray wolf spirit form, frowns in confusion. "Smell? You mean body odor? We wash ourselves quite thoroughly, you know."

  "A... Aura..." The man groans, pressing himself flat against the floor as if trying to burrow into the ground. "Your aura... it's too strong... They... they hunt by scent..."

  Nanao and Xiaolang simultaneously snap their heads to look at me, then exchange a look that clearly says well, we are screwed.

  "Oh hell," Nanao slaps his forehead. Smack. "Completely forgot. This kid is a total rookie. He hasn't learned Aura Concealment yet! Right now he is shining like a lighthouse in the pitch-black night!"

  "No wonder those Executioners keep lingering around here!" Xiaolang growls. "What a blunder! Let me handle this!"

  Without hesitation, the shadow of the gray wolf rushes straight into my body. A cold shiver runs down my spine. Xiaolang, now inside me, takes a deep breath and regulates the chaotic energy flow within, compressing it into a tiny, undetectable point deep in my subconscious.

  "Done," Xiaolang dusts off his hands and smirks triumphantly. "Too easy. Now not a single soul can smell us..."

  But the smile doesn't even have time to fully form on my lips before I, despite being shoved into a corner of my own mind, suddenly scream through my own mouth.

  "THE WINDOW!!! LOOK AT THE WINDOW!!!"

  Outside the dusty glass, floating in mid-air, is an eye.

  It is as big as a dinner plate, glowing red like fresh blood, with a vertical black pupil darting back and forth. And the worst part is... it is staring right at us.

  "Oh crap," Nanao groans.

  The cat god's curse has barely left his lips when the world around us explodes.

  BOOM!!!

  Not the sound of breaking glass. It is the sound of reinforced concrete being torn apart.

  A giant black hand, the size of a car, punches through the hotel's exterior wall. The rough fingers grip the edge of the breach and yank hard. A massive section of room 803's wall is peeled away as easily as someone peeling an orange, exposing the room to the black, thundering sky.

  Wind rushes in, sweeping away light furniture. We stumble, nearly getting sucked out into the void of the 8th floor.

  And there it is. The Giant Executioner. He clings to the outside of the building, bringing his massive head close to the destroyed wall. His mouth, stretching wide to his ears, opens to reveal jagged teeth, emitting a manic, ear-piercing cackle that stabs straight into my eardrums and makes my head feel like it might explode.

  "KEKEKEKEKEKEKE..."

  He raises a fist, preparing to crush us into paste.

  "DIVINE SHIELD!"

  Xiaolang shouts. My two hands shoot up towards the sky, and a hemisphere of blue energy explodes outward, enveloping the three of us and the injured man.

  BANG!

  The giant's fist slams into the shield. The entire floor shakes violently, dust falling like rain, but the shield holds, only showing a few small cracks.

  "Tough bastard!" Xiaolang grinds his teeth, sweat pouring down my forehead. "But I can't hold this for long! Run! To the 10th floor! The elevator is there!"

  Nanao immediately rushes to the injured man. "Let me possess you to move faster!"

  The cat god turns into a streak of light and charges at the man. But Thud! He bounces back and tumbles onto the floor.

  "What the hell?!" Nanao yells. "He has a 'Firewall'!"

  "I... I am personnel of Takama-ga-hara..." The man whispers, clutching his wound. "The proprietary seal... prevents... unauthorized access..."

  "Damn it, I forgot about that corporate policy!" Nanao screams in frustration. "We are about to die and the HR security clause is still working that well?!"

  "Stop whining! I'll carry him myself!" Xiaolang barks.

  Controlled by divine strength, my body rushes forward and hoists the man onto my shoulder like a sack of potatoes. Even though he is quite heavy, I feel weightless.

  "Run!"

  We dash out of the wall-less room, sprinting for the stairwell. The manic laughter of the giant and the sound of crumbling debris chase close behind.

  "9th floor! Almost there!" I shout.

  We sprint through the 9th-floor corridor, heading straight for the elevator lobby that leads to the "exit". But the moment we turn the corner, the whole group skids to a halt.

  Blocking the elevator isn't the giant, but something else.

  It is only about 2 meters tall, roughly the size of a human. Its entire body is also pitch black, slick and shiny as if coated in a layer of tar. It has no eyes, no nose, only a mouth.

  A wide mouth, grinning ear to ear, filled with sharp metallic teeth arranged in multiple spiral rows.

  It stands there, silent, dragging a long, rusty iron bar across the floor, creating a piercing screech... screech... sound.

  Upon seeing it, the Sensitive on my shoulder suddenly thrashes, wailing miserably like a child.

  "IT'S HIM! IT'S HIM! NO!!! SAVE ME!"

  I look at the creature in front of us, then look back at the giant smashing things behind us. An unwritten rule from every manga I have ever read suddenly appears vividly in my mind.

  "It's over," I mutter in despair. "Just like in the stories. The big ones are just trash mobs. The small, silent, dangerous-looking ones like this... are the bosses.”

  This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  "Be careful," Nanao says, his voice calm but his calico cat eyes shrinking into sharp slits. He raises a hand, erecting a golden circle of energy that envelops the gasping man. "This one isn't just for show. It looks like a high-level Executioner, specialized in hunting dangerous escaped souls. Don't get too bloodthirsty and damage the kid's body, you mad dog."

  "I know, I know, enough already!" Xiaolang snaps inside my head. "I know how to drive safely!"

  As soon as the words are out, the world around me flips upside down.

  I feel my body become heavy, as if gravity just increased tenfold, and then suddenly I get sucked down into the ground. No, not the ground, but beneath the ground. A sticky, cold sensation covers my limbs, as if I am being drowned in an endless puddle of black mud.

  "Is this... the Shadow Dive technique?" I exclaim in my mind, both terrified and excited.

  Before my eyes is no longer the hotel corridor. It is a dim space where all sounds are muffled. Floating around me are countless glittering fragments like mirrors, each reflecting a different angle of the reality above: the monster's heel, the cracked ceiling, Nanao's focused expression.

  "Hold on tight, kid! We're going up!"

  Xiaolang roars. I see my body, or rather my reflection in a mirror fragment, shoot forward.

  Crash!

  We tear through space, launching out from the Executioner's long shadow. A perfect sneak attack!

  My fist, wrapped in blue spiritual aura, slams straight into the monster's back with the force of an artillery shell.

  BOOM!

  The Executioner flies off like a rag doll, smashing the opposite wall. His shiny black body is flattened, twisted into a grotesque shape, black liquid splattering everywhere.

  "Bullseye!" I cheer in my head. "He's smashed to bits!"

  But my joy is extinguished after just two seconds.

  The black slime stuck on the wall doesn't fall down. It starts... bubbling. Snap, crackle sounds ring out like broken bones knitting themselves back together. From that mess, the wide grinning mouth appears again, intact and even more grotesque.

  "Damn it," Xiaolang mutters curses. "These guys are tougher than starving leeches. That hit didn't even scratch him."

  And then, the next scene makes my stomach churn. That black body mass doesn't just recover. It starts shaking violently, and then slowly splits apart.

  Like a fast-forwarded bacterial cell division process, from the initial Executioner, the black flesh stretches, snaps, and forms three separate entities. Three grinning mouths, three rusty iron bars.

  They don't attack immediately. Six eyes seem to be scanning us, evaluating, calculating.

  Then suddenly, they scatter.

  Two of them rush past me, ignoring me completely, heading straight for Nanao and the injured man in the back. The remaining one, slightly larger, stands right in front of me, twirling the iron bar in his hand menacingly.

  "These demons know how to use tactics too?!" I scream, cold sweat pouring out. "Divide and conquer?"

  "Executioners aren't mindless monsters like in your RPGs," Xiaolang's voice rings out, tense but full of excitement. "I bet they've been analyzing our threat levels this whole time. That cat has to protect a weak target, a much easier prey. Smart."

  The Executioner in front of me charges. The iron bar in his hand swings up, slashing a semicircle that tears through the wind.

  "Dodge!"

  My body bends in an absurd way, slipping past the reaper's scythe by a hair's breadth. The wind hisses past my ear, sharp and sweet. If that hit landed, I would definitely be split in two.

  "Awesome..." I mutter, my heart beating like a war drum. "This feeling... it's both terrifying enough to burst my heart and... unbearably exciting! Is this the feeling of real combat?"

  Xiaolang doesn't answer, focusing on controlling my body to unleash a barrage of uppercuts and roundhouse kicks to stall the monster.

  In the distance, Nanao remains strangely calm. He stands in front of the injured man, one hand in his pocket, the other flicking lightly as if shooing away a fly. With every flick, a hexagonal shield of light appears, blocking the frenzied attacks of the two clones.

  "Go Nanao! You look so cool!" I cheer.

  But then, observing more closely, I notice something... wrong.

  The two clones aren't attacking randomly. The first one uses the iron bar to smash the shield at a fixed point. The second one, instead of hitting, uses its pitch-black, sharp fingers to... probe the energy surface of the shield, as if searching for a gap.

  Those fingers vibrate intensely, emitting strange sound frequencies. Every time they do, the light on Nanao's shield dims just a tiny bit.

  A chill runs down my spine, even more terrifying than facing death.

  "Xiaolang..." I whisper, my voice trembling. "Something is wrong. They... aren't just attacking."

  I look at the grinning mouth of the one fighting me. It shows no anger or pain when punched. It is only... observing.

  "Done analyzing yet? I'm getting bored of this cat and mouse game."

  Nanao sighs, his tone as bored as if he has to do homework. The hand maintaining the shield suddenly clenches tight.

  Whoosh.

  The hexagonal energy shield, currently being probed by those pitch black fingers, suddenly softens. It undulates, rippling like a strip of glowing silk in the cat god's hand. Nanao grabs the edge of that "silk", yanks it hard, and then crumples it into a ball within his palm.

  And in a split second, the silk explodes, stretching out into a longsword of light, razor-thin but so sharp that the surrounding air groans.

  "Get out of my sight."

  Nanao swings his arm. No wasted movements, no battle cries. Only flashing sword strokes painting trajectories of death in the air.

  His speed... is even faster than when he slashed the woman in red inside the elevator. I swear my eyes haven't even had time to blink before the two clones freeze in place.

  A second of silence passes.

  The glossy black bodies of the two monsters simultaneously crack apart into hundreds of tiny shards, falling to the floor like black hail. They melt into puddles of pitch black, bubbling liquid.

  "Done on this side too!"

  Xiaolang's voice rings out proudly inside my head. He controls my right arm, raising it high into the air, then clenching the fist with brutal force.

  "Shadow Style: Twist!"

  The shadow of the remaining Executioner, the one currently stretching out beneath its feet under the crimson light, suddenly turns against its master. From that pool of darkness, countless skinny, pitch black hands sprout up like poisonous toadstools. They tightly grip the ankles, knees, waist, and neck of the monster.

  "Twist!"

  At Xiaolang's command, the shadow hands simultaneously wrench in a counter clockwise direction.

  The sound of bones shattering rings out, crisp and horrifying like someone snapping a bundle of dry twigs. The Executioner's body is twisted just like someone wringing out a soaking wet mop.

  He doesn't even have time to let out a scream. A stream of thick, pitch black liquid sprays out from the fissures in that distorted body. A pungent stench rises up, so terrible that I almost vomit right on the spot.

  "Hmph, done for," Xiaolang dusts off his hands (my hands) and smirks.

  But before the smile can fade, Nanao speaks up, his voice full of concern.

  "It's not over, stupid dog."

  I follow Nanao's gaze. The pitch black shards on the floor... they aren't disappearing. They are trembling, crawling towards each other like droplets of mercury, trying to reconstruct their original form. Even the twisted corpse that looks like a pretzel is slowly "untangling" its joints to recover.

  "Damn it," Nanao curses under his breath. "Just as I thought. To defeat these things, using physical strength or pure energy is useless. We have to find the 'source code' or the operating rule of the Law that created them to neutralize it."

  He turns to look at me and Xiaolang, his expression grave. "Do you understand? These Executioners are Walking Laws. Fighting them is like trying to punch the law of gravity. It's just a waste of energy."

  "So what now?" Xiaolang growls, taking a stance for round two. "Just stand still and get eaten? I'll tear them apart down to the molecular level if I have to!"

  The two gods are getting heated again, preparing to rush into a meaningless war of attrition. I stand in the middle, looking at the regenerating slime, then looking at the stairs leading up.

  My extreme fear suddenly turns into frustration.

  "I BEG OF YOU GUYS!!!" I scream at the top of my lungs, the sound echoing through the hallway.

  Both Nanao and Xiaolang jump and turn around.

  "What is it, kid?" Xiaolang asks.

  "It's not necessary!" I yell, pointing towards the stairs. "We don't need to win! We just need to RUN! The goal is to save the person and escape, not to kill monsters for loot! Why are you guys getting so absorbed in fighting?!"

  The two gods look stunned, blinking at each other.

  "Ah... right," Nanao scratches his ear. "The kid has a point. I completely forgot."

  "It's because you keep rambling about Laws, making my hands itchy," Xiaolang grumbles, but immediately drops his fighting stance.

  "Let's go! Before they pull themselves back together!"

  Xiaolang (still inhabiting my body) dashes over to the one armed man who is gasping for air. He hoists the man onto my back as effortlessly as carrying a backpack.

  "Hold on tight, old man! The Hell Express is departing now!"

  We run for our lives towards the staircase, leaving behind the angry growls of the Executioners who are slowly recovering.