Loop

"You…?" she muttered.

"We met?"

"You MIDGET! You ate my necklace!!"

"Ah… that…" The little red man responded but soon his expression became giddy, "Ah! So it's you!"

"How could you eat the necklace in front of its owner?!" she yelled in anger.

"I simply don't care about you, that's all," he responded lazily.

"Whatever the case you shouldn't!!"

"Ah, a woman is very emotional indeed," the little red guy commented.

"AND WHAT DOES BEING A WOMAN HAVE TO DO WITH BEING EMOTIONAL?!"

"Shut up okay?" the little red man uttered, frowning. "You want to get out right? You should start now or you'll die together with this world."

She paused for a moment and glanced at the time

[00:39:00]

She sighed as her gaze lowered to the ground.

'The opposite of him… Opposite of the boss?'

"Thinking?" the little red man whispered.

"Shut up," she reprimanded.

Recalling something that could help her at the moment, she was interrupted by the little monster who was already standing beside her.

"Why bother to remember, the past won't help you," he mumbled.

"Well, anything that can help me out, I will do it, unless you'll help, I won't mind…" She answered truthfully as she smirks.

"Yeah right, what's the point? You don't even remember your name, do you?" he asked.

She looks at him for a moment.

"My name is not important here," she responded.

The man nods his head, "As you said…Well, kidding aside, if you are smart enough, you would notice by now what he hates…"

She glanced at him.

"If you knew then just tell me," she replied.

"Why would I? I'll just watch you with the end of this world," he muttered.

*Sigh*

She scanned her surrounding once more… 'Everything is red.'

"Red…is too common," she mumbled as she looked at the red sky, "The sky should be blue at least…"

The ground from where she stands suddenly collapsed dragging her down the depths of the dark world below.

Her emerald eyes trembled upon gazing at the darkness under her, the blackness of the hole is eating her and devouring the color around her, and when she looks up, the red sky slowly got far away from her sight, until it looks just like a red dot.

"Any plans?!" The little red man shouted from behind, and as well falling like her.

"Do you think I have?!"

"Well at least make now!" The man yelled.

During the fall, she saw a pair of bright red eyes staring at her in the middle of the darkness. In a nanosecond, she thought the time felt slow as she saw a big crescent smile under those pair of eyes.

A notification pops up in her vision.

[Boss Level: Argon the cruel / Mission: Endure]

[Initiate flare to see the monster? Press to accept / Swipe to ignore]

Her finger then pressed the thin air, and the system immediately launch a red flare above them revealing the monster's height and face.

Her eyes widen, her mouth inhales air out of fear, and her whole body shivered.

"…We're dead," the red man muttered while falling.

Standing before them is a gigantic one-hundred-meter beast, standing on his two feet holding an axe in his right grip. His eyes were bright red and was grinning while looking at her falling to the ground.

As it moves its shoulders, the big boulders of rocks and soil follow to fall as well.

Alert, she tried to avoid them, but unfortunately, she was hit by a rock as big as her head on her belly making her gasp for air.

"Sh-t!" she cursed in a mixture of fear and nervousness.

In a couple of minutes, she felt her body knocks on the ground, and her bones broken. She couldn't think because of the hellish pain all over her. Just as before the red light of the flare faded a bright light then appeared behind the monster.

She realized it was the light from the clock.

[00:30:00]

***

The drowning lady standing in the middle of the dried lake looks into the red sky. She felt the ground shaken a few minutes ago, her gaze then landed on all the water she drank flowing from the ground coming from her eyes.

'Can that alien endure everything? She said she wanted to get out of this place, but can she?'

"One Thousand Five Hundred," she whispered before the water succumb to her.

Before she drowned fully, her eyes squinted as her lips formed a smile of satisfaction. Her thoughts whispered inside of her head. An intrusive thought that hope for the girl's defeat.

'…And she will replace me here.'

"One Thousand Five Hundred… Can she endure it all? Even if it's death?"

She then took a glimpse of the reaper above and smiled at it before she drowned.

***

"ACTIVATE WEAPON?!!" she shouted in desperation as she saw the full height of the beast coming to her with an enormous axe swinging from its right hold.

"You can't… I told you we're dead," the red man muttered who was laying on the ground a few distance away from her.

"NO!! NO!! I DON'T WANT THIS!! ANY OF THESE!"

"…You know what you can only do now...?" the midget said with a half-smile.

"What? TELL ME!"

"Endure," he said before he closes his eyes.

Her eyes widen when the gigantic foot of the monster was above the little red man.

"NO!! STOP!!" She screamed in fear.

She eyed the beast's foot again, in desperation, she tried to crawl away but her broken bones are just too much to bear for her body. Her face shows fear and desperation, her gaze was in terror as she tried to reach for something to hold and pull to make herself crawl faster, but there was none. And just as her right hand was stretching to search for something to hold, the monster's right foot stamped on her, leaving her right hand behind.

As her emerald eyes opened once again, she screamed in pain from her defeat a few minutes ago. After a minute she stops from wailing while her tears went with the wind she realized she was back at falling in the same hole, except that the time didn't stop, and the little red man was nowhere in sight.

She was back to feel the same pain again!

However some of the scenario changed. The light from the clock showed up again, but this time it was in the middle of her fall.

She saw the sharp blade of the axe coming through her, and before she could react, she lost again.

In repeat, she opened her closed eyes, screamed in the same extreme pain, still falling and in the same instance, met a different kind of end.

She feels it over and over again, sometimes on the ground, sometimes in the air, in different instances, but in the same cycle. In the middle of the pain, the system inserts a message to her, an instruction.

[Thirty minutes to endure, one thousand five hundred ends. Starting to count.]

[Current: 20/ 1480]

It felt like an eternity of hell for her. She felt like her head is going to burst from all kinds of pain.

She sees different kind of ends.

'Please let me live!!! I just want to live!!!'

She screamed inside her head while her tears rolled down her cheeks every time she felt the same pain and then back to the same scenario again.

Everything is painful, and at the same time, everything is numb.

She didn't dare to see the current number she have at the moment, all she could feel was the torture and extreme pain, it was making her dumb, she couldn't find any solution. All she could do was to wail in pain, to cry it all out that she felt like her eyes would come out from too much torture her body cannot handle.

'Help!!!! Stop!!!'

[800/ 700]

The system pops up in her vision, she looked at the message with a soulless gaze.

[Click to see an option]

Exhausted as another turn came again, she pressed the air.

[Endure the last 799 or Give up and drowned]

Her heartbeat skipped as she spits blood.

"…What?" she muttered with trembling lips. She was dumbfounded.

'That's it? That's all the choices I have?'

She was spacing out as she felt her lips arch upward, as another turn came again, her quivering mouth let out a trembling chuckle. As if all of these were absurd and trifle. She had nothing at the moment, she was no one at the very hour of her loop of execution.

Her gaze darkened as she pressed the word 'Endure'

'No… I get it now… In this world, I have no choice!!!!'

She gritted her teeth from all the pain.

A queer smirk on her lips was to be seen as she felt the enormous fist of the beast slammed from the back of her head, and after waking up again, another fatal blow would land on her body to end her lifeline. And everything would be back to the same routine, not until the countdown won't stops, she will endure it over again.

"I swear…Be it my life or another, this floor… this world will collapse, I will destroy this floor."

The final blow is finished, she wakes up falling from the hard ground, and like a vegetable she cannot move she was simply lying with her face on the ground.

The grounds shakes, she could hear and feel the loud steps of the beast, urging her best to move her head she saw that the beast was moving towards her.

'I thought this is it.'

Tears formed from her tired eyes again. Her trembling mouth let out a loud groan of agony as she recall what she needs to suffer again

"Please... please... Just let me through or just let me rest...I'm begging you.. Anyone... Anyone... Can someone... help me?" She whimpered.

Her tears wouldn't stop from falling from her eyes, she hardly can't breathe and see everything, her body is unable to move now, and she could feel that all her bones were broken.

Her sobbing was louder than her slow heartbeat.

She glanced at the name above the beast.

'Argon the cruel.'

Just as the monster move its axe, a bright light showed up despite the deepness of the hole she was into. She glanced at her saving grace and saw the angel of destruction above the monster with its enormous scythe swinging around the head of the beast.

There was a system notification that showed up again.

[Congratulations! You pass the thirty minutes' death parade!]

[00:00:00]