Era of Madness

Final battle 4

During their fight, when Tyler realized he was eventually going to lose against Melia, he ended up choosing to run away. Not because he was afraid of dying, but rather because him dying there would condemn Erica and John.

But now was different: at this moment, his only mission was to occupy Melia. He didn't have to care about his life, simply about not dying before enough time passed. This meant that he could finally settle the scores with the infamous Guardian without caring about dying. That he could focus on his only desire at this time:

"I'll kill you! You bitch, I'll fucking kill you" he shouted as he rushed toward Melia at astonishing speed.

He was once again in this state where everything around him seemed slower. The other way around, it meant that to people around, here Melia, he was the one moving at nightmarish speed.

"Don't think moving fast will be enough, you rat!" Melia shouted as she swung her whips toward him.

Tyler waited till the last moment, the point were the whip were only a few inches away from his body to jump forward, right in the gap between two of them. This way, they flew far past him and Melia couldn't retract them right away. It gave him the small attack window he needed.

In one jump, Tyler cut the distance between the two of them, finishing his course right in front of Melia. At the same moment, the metallic whips finally retracted back to form Melia's left arm, but it was already too late to block with it as Tyler threw his fist right at her face.

Melia managed to get her right arm in the way right before the fist connected with her face, but gritted her teeth as audible cracking sounds echoed in the place, and she was sent flying back, her back violently crashing against what was left of one of the labyrinth's walls. Her back simply hurt, but her right arm was completly broken.

Since when a simple untrained human could hit with such a strength? Well, the answer was simple: strength was nothing more than the mass multiplied by the speed. Tyler couldn't punch as well as a trained soldier or such but, at his current speed, even a normal punch would be enough to kill a normal human.

Melia gritted her teeth even more: she could already feel the Fefnir tech in her body helping her back get better, but she knew too well her arm wouldn't get any better before the fight ended, she could not rely on it.

As Tyler ran toward her again, she switched tactics: this time, she turned her arm into a net of thin razor-sharp blades, that got in Tyler's trajectory in a way he couldn't dodge it.

"Die, you damn rat"

'Dying? Why not' Tyler thought.

That was right, why would he cling to life like this? For years, he'd been destroying himself, living without moral nor respect for himself and the others. All this after the person he loved the most sacrified herself for him. Just because despite all of her effort, he was too much of a coward to live correctly with the guilt of her death. That why he was always ready to throw his life away only to reach his goals, be it in their first intrusion in the terminal, in the infiltration of the Party Hall, or right now.

Truth was, Tyler hated himself. He hated himself so much... his guilt and sadness weren't the main reason while he was always drinking so much, the true main reason was that he couldn't live with himself without it. Simply because of how much he despised his pathetic self.

But even then...

Tyler, forcing on his leg, brutally drifted to the side and jumped, avoiding a painful death by a few inches as the net of blades fell on the rest of a wall, reducing it to shreds despite its solidity.

'Not yet' Tyler thought.

... no matter how much he despised himself, Tyler couldn't just give up on living, at least not without making sure to take the infamous Guardian with him. He owed Alicia this at the very least.