When Sentry opened his eyes, he expected the sky, but all he saw was a crimson infinity. He lay on a flat, endless, ice-cold ground. As he tried to rise, his hands had shrunk; his fingers were thin and frail. He was trapped in the body of a ten-year-old boy.

  The sight made his stomach churn. He was amidst thousands—tens of thousands—of corpses. They rose like mountains, the air thick with the stench of fresh yet rotting blood. He wanted to vomit, but his throat was tied; he wanted to cry, but his ducts were bone-dry. This horror was darker than his worst nightmares.

  "Where am I?" he whispered. His child-voice cracked like breaking glass in the silence.

  Suddenly, a figure appeared. A man made of bone, skin stretched tight over a skeleton. In the center of his forehead sat a single, bloodshot eye. Lacking lips, his teeth were fully exposed in a permanent, chilling grin.

  Sentry scrambled to run, but his small legs tangled, and he collapsed back into the bloody mire. Shaking, he shrieked: "Who... who the hell are you?"

  The man’s teeth clicked, his hideous grin widening. "I am nothing."

  Sentry’s mind spiraled. It’s over, he thought. Gunner killed me. This is hell. I’m dead.

  "No, you aren't dead."

  Sentry froze. The man’s voice was shrill, like a rusted wire dragged across sandpaper. "Did I think that out loud?" Sentry gasped.

  The man tilted his head, that single eye piercing Sentry’s soul. "No... I heard you."

  Sentry let out a hysterical laugh. "Don't fuck with me! What is this place? A dream? What are these bodies?"

  As he spoke, the atmosphere turned heavy. The crimson sky bled into a dense blackness. The air turned to ice. Suddenly, the corpses stirred. Thousands of dead eyes locked onto little Sentry. With the sound of snapping bone, they rose, forming a wall around him.

  The man’s voice dropped into a monstrous roar. "These are your sins, Sentry! You did this!"

  Sentry looked at the corpses. Only a few were knights. The rest were innocents; women, the elderly, children with shattered faces...

  "I... I didn't do anything!" Sentry sobbed. "I didn't do this!"

  The man’s icy breath hissed in his ear. "You did! You're a butcher! You killed them all!"

  "I didn't!" Sentry screamed, clawing at his ears. "It wasn't my fault!"

  The man bellowed louder. "Everything is your fault! Everyone died because of you! Murderer!"

  Then, the thousands of corpses screamed in unison, a guttural roar from the depths: "YOU KILLED US! YOUR FAULT! MURDERER!"

  Sentry collapsed, his sobs choking him. "I didn't want this..." Amidst the screams of "MURDERER!", he slammed his head against the ground. "It wasn't my fault..."

  In that void, a spark appeared. Sentry lifted his tear-stained face.

  She was there.

  A beacon of beauty cutting through the dark. She knelt, her silk hair cascading down. She cupped his cheek with a hand as cold as ice yet full of peace.

  "Y-you..." Sentry stammered.

  The woman said nothing. She only smiled—a smile deep enough to wash away all the world's pain. Then, she leaned in and whispered:

  "You need to fight."

  The screams stopped. The bone-man vanished. The darkness shattered, and a blinding white light took over.

  "GET UP, SENTRY!"

  The silence broke. The roar of clashing steel and the stench of gunpowder flooded his mind. The woman began to turn into dust. Sentry lunged, trying to hold those hands one last time. "Don't go! Stop!"

  Before she vanished, her voice drifted to him: "Do not surrender to it... Do not let it take you."

  She was gone. Sentry snapped his eyes open, his face buried in cold mud. He lifted his head to a sickening sight. Leo was standing before Gunner. It wasn't a fight; Gunner was playing with him. Every blow sent Leo reeling, but the boy refused to stay down. Gunner was grinning, savoring the destruction.

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  Something inside Sentry snapped. He moved like a gale, snatching his sword and lunging. He brought the blade down on the monster's neck.

  BOOM!

  No sound of tearing flesh. The sword hit Gunner’s neck as if striking a boulder and shattered. The broken steel whistled through the air. Sentry and Gunner stood nose-to-nose. “B-but... I hit him clean... How is he not cut?”

  Then came Gunner’s massive fist from below. But everything was in slow motion. He saw the swing, the trajectory. He dodged. Another punch came; he slipped it. The cursed voices echoed: “You killed them... Your fault... Butcher...”

  Sentry’s pupils dilated, and the whites of his eyes turned pitch black. The darkness wanted out. For a few seconds, he rained blows upon Gunner so fast they were mere shadows. Gunner’s flesh began to tear. Just as he was about to lose himself to the "thing," the woman’s voice exploded: "Do not surrender!"

  Sentry snapped back to his senses. He slipped under a killing blow. Gunner’s eyes went wide. “How the fuck?” he thought. A bolt of lightning struck Sentry’s mind; if the neck was steel, the top was the weakness! He grabbed the broken shard, parried Gunner's arm, and drove the steel into Gunner's skull. Blood sprayed as the tip of the blade emerged from the other side.

  To an outsider, two monsters had traded hundreds of blows in a second until one landed a killing strike. Gunner’s eyes went dull. Blood poured from his mouth. He tried to speak, but his movements stopped. He stumbled back and hit the mud like a felled oak.

  Leo ran over, jumping with manic joy. "We did it! Holy shit, we actually did it! Gunner is down!"

  Sentry stared at the corpse. His heart hammered. But the roar of battle pulled him back. He grabbed Leo’s shoulder. "Shut up! We took Gunner down, but this is just the front line. The others are still dying. Move!"

  Leo grinned. "Right." They turned their backs and walked.

  Then, a sound rose. It wasn't human. It was a synchronized laugh—a woman’s shriek and a man’s growl. It was a sick, perverted sound; thousands of souls laughing in agony.

  Sentry’s neck turned slowly, as if pulled by rusted chains. Gunner was rising, step by step, defying gravity. Terror froze their blood.

  Gunner stood tall and gripped the hilt in his skull. He tilted his head to the left and let out a grin—a mask of pure madness from the depths of hell. His eyes rolled up, his lips pulled back to the gums. No joy, only a sickening hunger.

  He pulled the sword from his head with a grunt. The wound closed instantly as the flesh knitted back together. He spoke in a dual-toned, nightmarish voice:

  "You know why they say I'm 'not human,' boy? Can you hear the sobs of the thousands in my voice?"

  He let out that hideous laugh again. "Because I... am really not a human!"

  Leo turned to Sentry, his voice a trembling whisper. "M-m-master... I th-th-think we're... well..."

  Sentry didn't blink. "We're fucked."

  Gunner snatched the sword and threw it like a toothpick. It moved ten times faster than an arrow, a shrill whistle tearing the air.

  SPLAT!

  The steel buried itself in Leo’s gut and emerged from his back. Leo’s eyes went wide as dark blood sprayed from his mouth. Soldiers nearby dropped their honor and fled in terror.

  Sentry stared at Leo, who collapsed to the ground. He didn't blink. Gunner kept laughing. "Haven't seen someone like you in ages, Sentry! After all these years, you managed to push me to this!"

  As he spoke, he lifted his severed arm. Sentry watched in horror: nerves coiled like vines, veins flowed like hot rivers, and muscle fibers armored the flesh. The arm was whole again in seconds.

  "What the fuck are you?" Sentry muttered.

  "I am power made flesh, brat!" Gunner roared. "A simple human like you can never defeat me!"

  The Other Side of the Front In the back, the war was a bloodbath. "Right side! Shields up!" a soldier screamed. Viktor downed a knight and saw the south flank collapsing. "What the hell is happening there?" he growled, moving toward the chaos.

  At the center, General Charles clashed with the enemy general. The enemy laughed, "You're gonna lose, Charles! No matter how good you are, you're nothing against that monster!" Charles spurred his horse, driving his blade into the man's armor. "Even if we lose, I'm taking you to hell with me, you son of a bitch!"

  Back to Sentry. The shock on his face turned into a terrifying emptiness. His mind was a void. Every life he'd taken, every innocent face, passed through his mind. Was I forced? If I had a normal family, if I were noble, could I have escaped this agony?

  He looked at Leo, then at Gunner. Gunner waited mockingly. A pitch-black aura swallowed Sentry. The air around him felt like pure death. The screams of his victims turned into a storm inside him. He lifted his head; his eyes were black, his pupils a vibrating crimson dot.

  He began to claw at his own face. No sign of pain; just a blank expression as he dug his nails into his skin. Blood dripped into the mud. Do I need to die? Should this torture end? Then, the Princess’s promise echoed.

  "All I gotta do... is kill this piece of shit."

  A dark explosion erupted around Sentry, a black aura piercing the sky (image_2.png). Before Gunner could blink, Sentry appeared right in front of him. Before Gunner could react, a fist exploded against his face.

  Sentry attacked like a maniac. Every strike tore Gunner apart. Head shattered, torso ripped, limbs torn—but it all grew back. Gunner believed he was immortal, but for the first time, he thought he might die. Sentry let out a throat-tearing shriek as he swung.

  Gunner bloated his stomach and burst it open, sprouting dozens of arms to impale Sentry. Viktor arrived like a bolt of lightning, slicing the new arms like paper. "Get back, Sentry!" he barked.

  Sentry leaped back as Gunner lost all control. His body cracked and grew. He transformed into a 15-meter mass of flesh with hundreds of arms and legs. A hundred legs stood beneath him, the front ones tall like towers. Every hand had nails sharper than razors.

  Viktor had never seen anything like it. "This isn't a monster... it's hell itself," he muttered. Soldiers stopped fighting and trampled each other to escape. Gunner’s shriek-like laugh was loud enough to burst eardrums.

  Sentry, his face a void of black, turned to Viktor: "Viktor! Take Leo and get out! Tell the doctors to do whatever it takes. Keep him alive!"

  Viktor didn't hesitate. He hoisted Leo onto his shoulders. Leo was in bad shape, coughing blood, but Viktor ran for the back lines with everything he had.

  Now, on the North Front, a 15-meter demon and one human stood face-to-face...