When Seth's brain finally processed the sight of the desiccated corpse lunging at him, blackened teeth bared, he naturally acted on instinct.
He rolled to the side and let out a loud yelp of surprise. A yelp that definitely wasn't the type done by the brave and heroic monster slayers of legend, but heroism wasn't exactly at the forefront of his mind right now anyways.
He backpedalled, crawling backwards across the floor whilst letting out a slew of muttered curses before his back hit against the door, preventing him from moving any further.
The zombie, as he now understood it to be, dragged itself across the floor with its putrid hands, so of the fingers even reduced down to bone.
Seth kicked out at it a few tis, trying to stall its approach. But the problem with kicking it in the face, was that it was also putting his foot towards its slobbering maw.
On the third kick, its hands launched forward and locked around his thigh. The zombie lifted its head before biting down on the closest part of Seth, which was thankfully the sole of his shoe.
But this wasn't the ti to be relieved and relax. Instead, he lashed out a final ti, planting his heel into its head, to release it from its gnawing before it found sothing more appetising than his worn rubber soles.
Seth scrambled to his feet with his back against the door, before quickly side stepping another clumsy lunge. The lunge causing the corpse to slam its face into the door, making it shudder slightly.
He quickly skirted around the undead beast, making sure not to get grabbed by its flailing limbs or trip over anything. Making his way to the other side of the room in an attempt to distance himself and get so breathing room, he leapt over the puddle of fetid body goo that had seeped into the carpet by now.
Standing against the opposite wall, watching the uncoordinated corpse slowly get to its feet, he took a few long seconds to compose himself.
He felt his muscles tighten and loosen as he focused on his breathing, feeling how his heart thundered like a war-drum, pumping adrenaline throughout his body.
With each breath, his expression grew more serious. The panic receded, being replaced by a deadly concentration. It was a concentration built up and perfected through countless battles. Not true battles, of course. Not ones with life or death stakes, like his current one.
Instead, it was over a decade of intense virtual battles that honed this focus.
You may say they are not the sa, and you would be right. Even Seth himself would not dare to say that a thousand virtual battles could ever prepare him for this singular real battle. But nonetheless, it was this concentration that allowed him to control his panic, for this was all he had. And he made damn sure to make it work.
Through trained breathing and focus, he managed to quell the adrenaline coursing through his veins like ignited jet fuel, to halt the trembling of his hands and turn them as still as a surgeon's.
It was what allowed him to take his body's natural response to excitent, to danger, and turn it into a drive for a single goal. But this ti, instead of that goal being simply winning an online match or getting a near impossible ga achievent, it was sothing far more simple, yet all the more difficult.
Survival.
He watched the andering corpse slowly get to its feet, it's decrepit legs almost collapsing under its own weight yet sohow holding true. Knowing he only had a small amount of ti, but with his brain overclocked and running a mile a minute, he had already decided what he would do.
As the zombie turned around and bared its blacked, rotten teeth, Seth quickly raised his hand in turn. The nigh-invisible strings protruding from his fingertips extending out in length. From 1 inch to 2 inches, then 5 inches then 10 inches, until each of the five strings dancing in the air were 3 tres in length.
'I've been given this power... I don't know how or who from. But I know why. It's for this, right here and right now. To use this power to defend myself. To SURVIVE. So let's fucking go!' He shouted to himself in his head, hyping himself up to bolster his confidence and slay the monster in front of him.
The zombie took a few staggered steps before lunging forward again, hands grasping mindlessly and teeth ready to sink into warm, living flesh. But Seth had expected it. Of course he had, he'd be a sha to gars everywhere, if he couldn't predict the moves of a simple zombie.
So when the lunging beast got close, Seth slipped to the side, dodging under its grasping claws, and slinked behind it. With a swift kick to the back of its knee, he made sure that the already unsteady corpse wouldn't be able to regain its balance in ti to make a second attack.
As the undead office drone slamd against the copy machine he had been fussing over in his last monts of life, propelled forward by its own now-inadequate balance, Seth made his killer move. With a sweep of his left hand, he sent the strings, the Puppeteers Threads, slicing towards the rotting corpse.
He watched as they cut cleanly through the lumbering zombie, the copy machine it was hunched over, the shelving either side of himself and even the nearby wall. Grinning madly to himself, he waited for a mont to see them all collapse into pieces.
But instead of seeing the sight which so many ani had led him to believe would be seeing, what he in fact saw… was the zombie starting to stand up again. It didn't get sliced into pieces, nor was the wall. It didn't even so much as rustle the sullied clothes still hanging on the zombies' decayed flesh! They just passed through them like they didn't even exist, before continuing to dance in the air like seaweed in the ocean.
Seth's panic flared up for a second before he quickly squashed it back down, rushing over to the zombie to take care of it after his failed super attack. He grabbed sothing he knew would work, the lid of the copy machine, before repeatedly slamming it down, over and over.
He kept going, even when the corpse had finally returned to its natural state of stillness. He kept going, even when the sounds of the violent bashing beca wet and visceral. He kept going, even when he could feel the warmth of putrid blood on his trousers and the tallic stench filled his nostrils.
Only when he could nearly close the lid flat down on the copy machine, did he finally stop taking his frustrations out on the long dead undead.
He lifted his hand, which was trembling and covered in blood, and looked at the dancing threads emanating from his fingertips.
The ethereal threads of the puppeteer.
"What the fuck!?"
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