SOWER: My Cultivation Creates Gods

11 | It Has to Be Enough

He got up.

The soldier turned. Its movements were slower now. Uneven. The damage to its knee affected its gait.

*It's hurt. It can be hurt. Which means it can be killed.*

*You just have to figure out how.*

Rome's eyes swept the arena. Sand. Torches. Stone walls. Other hunters watching, too scared or too injured to help.

*Useless. All of them useless.*

*No. Focus. What do you have? What can you use?*

His knife. Half the blade was chipped now. Wouldn't last much longer.

His jacket. Already torn. Already bloody.

His body. Broken and bleeding and running on fumes.

*That's it. That's all you've got.*

*So use it.*

The soldier limped toward him. Sword dragging through the sand. Those burning eyes fixed on him with something that might have been rage.

*Good. Be angry. Angry means sloppy.*

"That all you got?" Rome spat blood. Grinned with red teeth. "I've had hangovers that hit harder than you."

The soldier's grip tightened on its sword.

*Yeah. Definitely angry.*

It charged.

Limping. Uneven. But still fast. Still deadly.

Rome didn't run.

*This is gonna suck.*

He met the charge head-on.

The sword came in low. A sweep aimed at his legs.

Rome jumped.

Not high. Not gracefully. Just enough to clear the blade.

He landed on it.

His weight drove the sword into the sand. Pinned it there. The soldier tried to yank it free but Rome was already moving, already climbing, using the creature's own arm as a ladder.

*You want to kill me? Fine. But I'm taking you with me.*

His knife found the gap in the helmet. The one he'd made earlier. He drove it in. Felt resistance. Felt something give.

The soldier screamed.

That horrible metal-on-stone sound. It echoed off the arena walls.

Rome twisted the blade.

"DIE ALREADY!"

The knife snapped.

The sound was sharp and final—metal giving way under impossible strain. Half the blade stayed embedded in the creature's neck, buried in whatever passed for flesh beneath that ancient armor.

The other half came away in Rome's hand, reduced to nothing more than a jagged handle with a stub of broken steel.

*No no no—*

The soldier's gauntleted hand closed around his forearm.

*Oh fuck.*

It squeezed.

Pain exploded up his arm—white-hot and all-consuming, more pain than Rome had ever felt in his life. More pain than he knew a human body could produce without shutting down completely.

His bones ground together under the pressure, radius and ulna compressing against each other in ways they were never meant to. Something cracked.

He felt it more than heard it. Something else tore—muscle, tendon, he didn't know, couldn't tell, couldn't think past the agony.

He screamed.

The sound that came out of him wasn't human. Wasn't words. Just raw animal suffering given voice.

The soldier threw him.

Rome's body left the ground, airborne for a brief, weightless moment before gravity remembered him. He hit the arena wall with bone-jarring force. The impact drove every bit of air from his lungs.

He slid down the blood-slicked stone, leaving a dark red smear in his wake, and crumpled in the sand at the wall's base.

*Get up.*

He couldn't feel his arm. Why couldn't he feel his arm? It was there—he could see it lying at an unnatural angle—but there was nothing.

*GET UP.*

The soldier was on its knees. Both hands at its throat. Trying to pull the broken blade free. Black ichor poured from the wound, hissing where it hit the sand.

*It's dying. I hurt it. I actually—*

*GET UP AND FINISH IT.*

Rome's legs moved. He didn't remember telling them to. His body operated on pure instinct now, survival overriding everything else.

The broken knife handle was still in his hand. Maybe two inches of jagged blade left.

*Enough. It's enough.*

*It has to be enough.*

The soldier looked up as he approached. Those burning eyes flickered. Dimmed.

"*Tu...*" Its voice was static. Broken. "*...non potes...*"

"I don't..." Rome's breath came in gasps. "...I don't speak... dead languages... asshole."