Somewhere with a warped time zone…
Hiroko groaned in pain.
If he didn't have the flaming sword, he would have died a hundred times over. He could feel his body aching and the shadows around him trembling. It had been so long since he arrived in that dimension, and he was constantly busy.
"Why am I still alive?" He mumbled to himself, propping himself on a knee against his sword.
His voice came out of his cranial bones as he was now familiar with.
"I'm that old already? Time flies in Modest."
But then again, he could have gotten the calculations wrong.
"Nope, otherwise my mother would be turning in her grave. Kuso!"
Hiroko swiftly brought his attention back to the task at hand. Rocky; the golem that had introduced him to Modest. His sole roommate to the desolate rocky plains.
It was at the end of a heated battle between man and golem. Rocky Golem had been tracking Hiroko by whatever means, and it was still mad about its arm which had miraculously grown back a long time ago. Hiroko's wounds were healing at rapid speed, encased in shadows, and Rocky was mortally battered, but he still wouldn't back down even after Hiroko severed off both its arms and mauled its other eye.
On a flat topography of seven kilometers in radius decorated with ageless bone skeletons, pressing his hand onto his side where shadows quickly healed a fresh gash, Hiroko slowly advanced the defeated but unyielding creature and pointed his blade at it.
On its knees, bleeding a dark purple, the rock monster looked at Hiroko with its one remaining good eye, a primitive silence disabling it to speak. This would be the millionth time he would ask it the same thing:
"Do you give up?"
The creature, still stuck in its primitive silence, stared at him with a somewhat stubborn resolve, refusing to yield. Hiroko pressed out a weary sigh and raised his sword high…
"Gomen nasai…"
…then he brought it down on Rocky.
The blade was about to shatter Rocky Golem's rocky skull when Hiroko suddenly stopped himself. His muscles contracted and pulled his death blow back. He had noticed how the monster closed its eye and grimaced.
He paused and stared at Rocky. The golem waited a few seconds before it opened its eye, looking up at him.
Somehow, for whatever reason, Hiroko felt like he saw something familiar in it. He saw an emotion. An emotion of something that had endured what could have been centuries of negative energy and suffering.
He saw confusion.
And then he saw anguish. Rocky seemed anguished by Hiroko's pausing but he also seemed to have been asking for mercy. Not for his life, he was asking for a way to escape his pitiful and miserable existence.
Rocky was looking to be euthanized by Hiroko.
All that time of following Hiroko and refusing to give up the fight even if it couldn't go on were all it could do to come near death.
Hiroko lowered his saber and stared at the ground.
Many, many countless hours had passed by like lightning since he last saw civilization.
Allowing a temporary lapse in his guard, Hiroko bowed his head and fought back a lot of tears.
"This is it; the day you lose your mind. You can read emotions off of monsters now?"
He looked back at Rocky who was still silently staring at him.
"You crazy, crazy pile of rocks."
Hiroko smirked, shaking his head and wiping his eyes with the back of his left hand.
"Don't mind me," he chuckled. "All those years of inhaling these toxic gases has made my emotions unstable. I haven't sniffed rage in a while."
He paused and looked down at the golem.
His saber dropped to the solid stone ground at his feet. The golem did not change its viewpoint even slightly. A foot raised slowly from the ground and landed ahead. Then the other foot did the same thing, placing the young man closer to the rock monster. He took several more steps before he came face-to-face with the kneeling creature…
Tears bubbling in the corners of his eyes, he parapsychologically said through a stubborn smile:
"It's been so long since I fell into this hellhole, Rocky. The only concerning thing to ask is why my clothes still fit me. You've been entertaining… as always. That looks like it hurts."
He pointed at the open gash on the golem's rocky abdomen, leaking a lot of the purple substance.
There was a slight but barely noticeable change in the dying golem's demeanor as its one good eye slightly brightened. It then dimmed and the enormous structure of rocks collapsed on the ground, Hiroko barely reacting. The rocks started to deteriorate as Hiroko watched helplessly.
"So it's like that?"
The rocks began to crumble, Hiroko desperately watching them turn into dust. His restrained tears slid down his chin and dropped onto the dust, gently stirring it. He wiped a tear and studied it.
That was a peculiar thing.
The last time he cried… was after he woke up from a nightmare that told him he was going to see April again. That was downright mean. He was hoping he could scold her a few times. But the reality was that she was dead wherever she was. She couldn't have possibly survived wherever she had landed.
Too delicate.
Something horrible must have done away with her. Berating himself for his lack of faith in April since she was also raised to survive on her own, he also considered that since he himself had been surviving every golem attack thanks to the visions he saw of it, he had more advantage as they showed the creature's strengths, weaknesses and how to keep his life.
He gave the golem dust a heartbroken look as he fell lower to his knees.
Placing his forehead on the ground and directly in the purple dust, Hiroko gritted his teeth.
His voice went:
"I can't even feel sorry for myself though. If I were a girl, I'd be so wrecked right now. I want McDonald's."
He had no idea why the hell he was talking to the golem's dust as if it were the remains of his cremated lover. Or why everything he said wanted to make him laugh.
Modest had done a number on the poor boy. But as he raised his head from the ground, the golem dirt stirred. Okay, he bore in mind there was never a gust in Modest – heck, not even a breeze! Just the incinerating sunbeams. Everything was always still, but the dust at his knees was being stirred by an invisible force.
It all rose from the ground forming a little tornado as it hovered in front of Hiroko's eyes.
"Okay. I get it; I'm going crazy. No need to rub it in."
Then, without warning, all of the dust rushed at Hiroko and went into him through his gaping mouth causing an excruciating amount of pain to flood his mind and body before everything went black.
A dozen minutes later, he snapped his eyes open and crawled to a nearby boulder, feeling as if a heavy weight sat on his back.
He reached the supposed boulder and then lost consciousness again. A very harsh sunbeam burnt past him right after he passed out.