“So what do you say? What should we do?” Tas asked.

  “Actually, right now, I have absolutely nooo- idea on what to do.”

  “Give up?”

  “Fucking hell do I want to.”

  “Well, I don’t want to.” Tas went to the left, opening the door opposite the broken window. “Oh… my… God! Harley, it’s another basement.”

  “What the fuck is this!” He smiled. “A maze! Hahahaha!” Harley slowly walked towards Tas, his hand on his stomach, back bent, laughing hard. Then he kicked Tas, making him roll down the stairs, landing on the bottom. As soon as his fall stopped, zombies surrounded him.

  “There were zombies there too, you know.”

  “For fuck sake Harley!” He yelled, bending his body in the shape of an S, barely avoiding the zombies’ claws. Afterwards, he sliced at knee length, killing three zombies. While Tas was struggling, once he stood up, a hand tapped on his shoulder twice, and Harley walked past him.

  “This seems like the right place.”

  The two arrived in another long tunnel. However, this time, there were torches hung on the left wall every five meters. The tunnel was different from the beginning room, its walls and floors were poorly made, pieces of rocks sticking out of their position, hanging down, looking like they could fall anytime.

  Tas acted the bigger man and suppressed himself from taking revenge or even speaking up. The two walked the tunnel, slowly taking their time, their gut telling them to. A few minutes later, the end of the tunnel was still out of sight. An hour later, there was still nothing new. Then another hour passed by, and a zombie appeared at the end, nearing every step.

  They quickly took care of it, not even stopping on their track. Soon, two zombies appeared, and the two were visibly confused. “This tower is really starting to make no sense.” Said Harley. “We were just in a dystopian city where we were supposed to survive, but now we are in a tunnel where an enemy just increases by one?”

  “I’m not even confused, I just accept it, I won’t fall for anything.”

  “Won’t fall for anything? Uh-huh.” Harley slowed down, letting Tas take the lead. Tas then raised his right hand, holding a dagger and waving it to the back.

  “I won’t fall for the shit, Harley.”

  Two hours passed, and the enemies increased one by one. It took a bit more time, but eventually, Tas got tired and stopped himself. He pressed his back on the left wall and looked to the left, his breath catching up to him, sweat coating his entire body like a plastic jacket. “The fuck you looking at.” He slid down, sitting, pressing his eyes hard. “It’s so fucking hot!”

  “Yeah, I know, right?”

  “When the fuck is this tunnel going to end.” Tas wiped his face and looked back at Harley. With his face covered with sweat, vision blurry, and heart beating faster than he could think, Harley stood menacingly, smiling, standing at perfect condition.

  “This is the real floor 3, Tas.”

  “What?

  “It was obvious. I mean, beating the dystopian setting may be possible, but that giant worm, I just assumed it was a worm cause of the mouth, you get it right? You get it.” Harley’s eyes stretched upward to his forehead.

  “Yeah.” He said with a click of his tongue.

  “But, beating the outside is really hard, I mean we don’t even know how that worm works, and there is no way we can defeat it when the dagger literally broke so easily, like it doesn’t even make any sense. No, but really, think about it realistically, I don’t know how that even happened.”

  “Ughh!” Tas groaned. “Just get to the fucking point!”

  “Isn’t me talking this much already enough ‘point’?” He raised his hands and made quotation marks with his fingers. Then he smiled at Tas, waiting for him to make a realization. A few seconds passed, and Harley’s mouth started to twitch. Then, a few seconds more, his eyes. Before he could explode and yell, Tas’s eyes glowed.

  “Took you long enough.” Harley sat down beside Tas and tapped on his shoulder.

  “Then, it’s what you said.”

  “Yep, we are the food. Either way, we probably could just keep going on the endless tunnel or just stay here and wait till the time is over.”

  “It sounds too simple.”

  “Maybe it is just that simple. The point that makes it hard is trying to eat your own kind. Without food, we’re the only ones we can actually eat. The first five floors are probably just another pseudo tutorial meant for the climbers to get used to what will actually happen in the future.”

  “Still, it can’t be that easy.”

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  “Duh, I don’t actually think this tunnel allows both of us to stop moving.”

  “What?”

  The ground shook, vibrating lightly. It wasn’t as strong as the previous ones, but the significance of it was much scarier than before. Harley immediately stood up and started walking in the same direction. A few seconds later and the ground stopped shaking. “See.”

  “Well, you do the work, I’m tired, hungry, and feel like I’m going to die.”

  “Hm… you seemed to have calmed down from rushing, the fuck happened to you?”

  Tas lay down on the floor and fell asleep. “Okay… but seriously? He really dares to sleep in front of me? You know I’m just going to eat you, right?” Whether it was instinct, muscle memory, or a different force altogether, Tas immediately woke up and slapped Harley on the face.

  “And you better not sleep either, or I’ll eat you.”

  “Hahaha!”

  Tas immediately sat back down after slapping Harley. For a few minutes to an hour, he rested sitting down, watching Harley walk and monsters get closer like they were on a magical treadmill.

  Time passed quickly. Just a few more hours, Tas’s and Harley’s stomachs began to grumble. Exhaustion clawed their body to the ground. Their stomach felt an infinite number of stabs, their mouth left open wide, eyes closed, and their body could only hope to crawl.

  The monsters appearing before them began to arrive in numbers where the two of them were needed to act. A few minutes on the ground, the two felt for the second time the shaking of the tunnel.

  “No choice.” Harley smiled with his eyes closed. “Is it really this fucking tiring to not eat for just a day or so. Cause God! I know now!”

  Despite the lack of strength that remained inside Harley, Tas still had some in his system. The pain surging in both their stomach was far better handled by Tas. “I’ve experienced more painful deaths than this fucking starvation bullshit!”

  “If you have, can I get a piece of your meat?” Said Harley, immediately rushing his hand to cover his mouth. “Hahaha! That sounded so wrong.”

  “Either way, no to both,” Tas commented.

  As the two suffered from complete exhaustion, moving their bodies, dragged by fatigue, each second passing felt like an entire year was being ripped from their life. Tas struggled to keep walking. He occasionally fell, getting a single second of break, crawling just right after. With each inch paved, pushed solely by conviction, Tas raised his body slowly, getting up, and repeating the process once more.

  While Harley watched the gruelling scene in front of him, guilt, hunger, and anger pushed him to stay awake. I have to… there’s no choice… but… it feels so disgusting… He thought, imagining his flesh ripped by his teeth. The marks that would be left were horrifying to imagine. He had experienced much worse, but for those scars of battle made by his own, all damage gone to his stomach, Ughhhhhh…

  “Tas… I don’t think I can do it. This shit was rigged… There is no way I would be this tired in just a day.”

  “You idiot… we were fighting for a whole day straight… of course we would be tired.”

  “There are more lives, I should just…” His eyes closed, mouth left open, yet no air left from inside. Then a slap came from Tas, waking Harley up for just a few more seconds.

  “This is just a fucking trial! Eat yourself you shithead! Get used to it! Don’t waste a fucking life! Even lying on the ground, you could gain so much!” Tas fell to the ground, all his strength gone from his last scolding. His breath dimmed down, his face plummeted to the ground, and not a single one of his limbs could continue moving.

  A pack of twenty-two zombies walked towards the two, they didn’t even notice that they were already staring at their death. It wasn’t known to Tas, but at the moment he fell, he had died.

  Now, Harley was left sitting, staring at the approaching zombies. Their open flesh, hanging organs, and windowed bones all felt unappetizing. Even with all the pleas of his stomach, humans just couldn’t become food to Harley, or at least not himself.

  The body of Tas on the ground began to turn into something delicious. From his sight, it was no longer a corpse, but fried chicken with aroma fleeing from its body, the smell energizing him. Harley quickly shook his head, headache was left behind. I’ll die anyway… He raised his arm, opening his mouth, and in a quick second, he bit into his flesh, ripping it apart.

  The zombies soon came close, a meter away from him. A second before a zombie smashes his head, he chewed on his own skin, staring at the corpse in front of him. What a hypocrite.

  [17 Lives Remaining]