Chapter 2

To catch a butterfly, one must build a garden.

---

Out of breath and almost depleted of energy he had been conserving, the sudden adrenaline rush saved Wil from getting attacked by the mimicker, "Chop Pohc".

Huffing, Wil came to an abrupt stop when the eyeglasses showed him a warning that should not be neglected.

[Warning: You are moving away from the designated area! Please go back! Further straying from the target location will result in a fatality.]

"A fatality? Does... that mean something bad will happen to me if I escape from this suburb? Then, I have to go back there? But what if that imposter is chased after me?"

Testing the limitations of the warning, Wil slowly took each step away from the chaotic suburb. And as he strayed further away, the ringing emitted by the eyeglasses, grew louder and louder to the point that it was deafening.

"Ah, fuck!"

As he looks back, staring at the lifeless suburb where a killing alien lurks around and hacks everyone it sees, Wil steels his resolve despite the clouding fear the mimicker induced in him.

"Is that really an alien? What even is this place? The bastard said that this is in America, but does not look like it!"

For Wil to end up finding himself in a suburban area in America when he was living in Manila, Philippines, everything was confusing. He did not want to believe any of it, but he had slapped himself several times already, hoping that it was all a dream. Or a nightmare.

"I don't want to do this, but I should go back. Maybe I'll find people."

As the wind blows, carrying a sense of gut-wrenching fear, the silence around Wil begins to gradually make a ringing sound.

Since most of the houses that were built in the suburb were identical to each other, it was kind of different to tell where the house where Wil found the old man. However, if his memory serves him right, Wil should be able to discern it based on his surroundings. The corpses that he found on the ground and the mess it had left behind.

"Avoiding that place is the right thing to do. Since this device is telling me that I'm moving away from the area that I should stay at, I can move around."

Exploring the neighborhood, wishing that he would stumble upon anyone who could help him at that time of the night, Wil's hope and mental health got progressively worse as silence and the lack of someone to rely on drained him. He was not really the dependent type of guy, but he knew himself that it would take more than him to take out the old man.

With a single glance at the monster that instantly registered in his mind as his mind wandered deep in his thoughts, now hopeless, Wil unexpectedly came across a woman. With bruises all over her legs and only wearing a jacket, the first thing that came to Wil's mind was not to help her but instead stay on his guard.

"I've been walking around for minutes, and I've only stumbled across a woman. I need to stay careful. She might be the mimicker."

Wil realized that his memory of walking around and looking at the corpses he would pass by would be his weapon at the time. Being on guard and unfaltering in spite of the overwhelming pressure from overthinking and logically coming up with scenarios will keep him alive.

"H-Help me," the woman spoke. Her voice was dry, and blood was dripping on her face from the open wound on the side of her forehead. "It... It killed my family!"

Tears started to pour from her eyes as the woman began to sob. She did her best to stop herself from remembering the bitter truth, but she just couldn't stop herself from crying her eyes out.

Seeing the vulnerable state the lady was in, as a man, Wil's sense of responsibility to protect the weak as per his natural principle kicked in.

"Are you okay? You're not hurt anywhere except for your forehe—"

What Wil thought was just a normal woman at first, someone who was weak and bereaved hid a monstrous truth behind the weeping facade.

"Oh, you're quite sharp!"

Why the old man before was hiding his hand behind his back not because he was hiding a weapon but rather hiding the weapon that he was.

One step backward Wil saw how the lady's arm immediately transformed into a meat-slashing blade that flew towards Wil's direction, which the man absurdly did his best in avoiding. However, its superhuman speed transcended Wil's reflexes, thus inflicting a diagonal wound on his body. His shirt was ripped, and the injury sent him to a far cry.

"Fuck! That hurts!"

Even though he was in great pain, Wil initiatively crawled away as he tried to get up and bear with the pain.

The monster—on the other hand—seeing Wil struggle to get away filled it with exhilaration. The taste of blood from its hands gave it malevolent satisfaction, now yearning for Wil's flesh.

"Haa, haa..."

Wil's struggle made him think about life.

"In the end... I am all alone. I knew that we only had ourselves. That we can't really rely on others!"

"Didn't one of history's famous philosophers say that life is the survival of the fittest? One must trample on the other's lives, otherwise it is yours that will get stomped on."

On the empty road where the darkness of the night was engulfed by roadside lamps, illuminating the sidewalks, Wil's bloodied self strugglingly ran across in a diagonal pattern. He thought that by doing so, he wouldn't be an easy target for the monster. He would look over his shoulder every five seconds, calculating the gap and how long it would take the alien to reach him.

[Time limit: 21 minutes 49 seconds]

"I... won't last that long, and I don't... even know, haa, know what will happen once that timer runs out!"

Blood gushed out of his mouth as his eyes slowly lowered to where the burning sensation was. In his right flank, the lady's arm blade had thrust through his body. Once the monster roughly pulled out its hand, Wil immediately lost all of his strength, eventually falling to his knees.

Like he was robbed of all his energy, Wil couldn't even move a finger and was just waiting for his body to fall to the ground while the monster killed him.

"Pathetic, yet another boring slaughter."

Helpless against the otherworldly being, Wil fell on his side as blood continued to drip out of his mouth and injuries.

Deeming Wil as an easy hunt, the alien was about to end his life when all of a sudden someone jumped it from behind and just started to voraciously and continuously stabbed it everywhere on its body with what seemed to be a knife. Not just any normal pain but also imbued with a paralyzing substance.

Growlingly, each three-inch deep thrust onto its body leaves a remarkably painful agony on the alien as it fights for its life. The person riding on his back with his hand around the monster's neck was easily dodging the alien's hands as it tried to grab him.

It took one move to put a stop to the stabbing by grabbing onto the person's body using both hands and then intentionally slamming his back on the pavement as hard as it could.

The man behind the monster painfully groaned, and the stabbing stopped... for a moment. One reason why the monster could not use its blade-like arm was due to the inflicted injuries on it, causing the transformation to falter.

"Rahhh!"

It was unexpected for someone to show up all of a sudden.

"Were you just hiding...? Just looking for the right opportunity?!"

"You fucking got it right, disgusting creep!"

In Wil's ears, the conversation was faint. His vision had become blurry because of the immense blood loss and was on the verge of death. Compared to falling to his death, dying of blood loss as his feelings turned cold, and going through an intense surge of excruciating pain, Wil could say that he would always choose to fall to his death.

"L-Let go of me, weakling!"

There was no stopping the man from slaughtering the monster. He knew that once he let go or if the alien ever escaped, he wouldn't have another chance of killing the monster

The brutal yet slightly sloppy stabbing continued, begrudgingly ravishing the monster's inside all over its body using the sharp knife. Each strike was wearing it down, losing the ability to fight back. However, its resolve didn't falter. For the last time, it gathered every ounce of strength left and made its arm a small pointy hard flesh that pierced through the man's lower chin.

"Guhahaha!" Guffawed the man who predicted what would happen, tilting his head away to avoid having his head completely pierced through his skull. "Motherfucker!"

Then, it was the monster's neck that was targeted. The man grew stronger after experiencing pain as each strike caused the monster's neck to get gradually sliced through.

Screamingly, the man's unwavering desire to cut off the monster's head by relentlessly thrusting the knife onto its neck paid off once his left hand flew away from pulling hard on the alien's head as its neck's flesh completely came apart, severing the monster's head completely.

~