"Fuck," Henry wheezed, the curse tearing through his throat alongside another violent cough of blood.
Before his battered mind could even process the extent of the damage to his ribs, the air whistled sharply. The F-Rank cobra wasn't giving him a second to breathe. Its massive tail was already swinging back toward him, aimed dead at his head for a follow-up strike.
It took absolutely everything in him, every shred of his speed and willpower, to violently drop his center of gravity. He threw himself downward, the thick, scaled tail grazing the very top of his hair as it smashed into the stone wall right where his skull had just been.
But as the tail struck the rock, its momentum came to a complete halt.
Henry saw the opening. Operating purely on raw adrenaline and survival instinct, he planted his boots, gripped his sword, and swung upward with every ounce of strength he had left.
The steel bit deep, cleanly severing the last three feet of the massive snake's tail.
The Cobra let out an agonizing shriek, rearing its head back in shock. Henry didn't hesitate. Ignoring the pain in his chest, he launched himself off the wall and drove his blade in a brutal, thrust straight through the underside of the monster's jaw, burying the steel deep into its brain.
The yellow F shattered. The massive cobra went completely limp before dissolving into a heavy shower of blue light.
Henry ripped his sword free, his chest heaving, but the fight wasn't over. As the light faded, the grim reality of his situation set in. The superheated floor had finally cooled just enough to be traversable, and the six remaining cobras had used the distraction of the boss fight to completely surround him against the wall.
'I can't give up now,' Henry thought, his vision blurring slightly at the edges.
He locked eyes with the cobra furthest to his left and charged. But his sprint was completely wrong. His footwork was clumsy, his balance dangerously skewed.
He closed the distance, wildly swinging his sword in a wide, horizontal slash. The cobra reared back to dodge the heavy blow, but it was a feint. Mid-swing, Henry violently snapped his wrist, turning the slash into a brutal forward thrust that impaled the serpent cleanly through the neck.
He ripped the blade out, breaking the swarm's physical entrapment. But as he tried to pivot, he realized exactly why his balance was completely off and why he couldn't strike with his usual fluidity.
He looked down at his left arm. It was hanging completely limp at his side, swinging lifelessly with his momentum.
'I didn't even realize it was broken,' Henry thought, a cold, detached shock setting in. The bone was shattered from absorbing the boss's tail whip.
The realization only hardened his resolve. 'Now I really can't give up.'
If he failed and restarted the dungeon now, the broken arm would sideline him for a while. He couldn't afford the setback.
"Five more," Henry choked out, coughing up another splatter of blood onto his crumpled chest plate.
He forced his heavy legs to move, falling back into the kiting strategy, but it was a grotesque parody of his usual footwork.
Without his left arm to counterbalance his momentum, his center of gravity was entirely ruined; every sharp pivot or sudden stop felt like stepping off the deck of a rolling ship.
He dragged his boots, stumbling awkwardly over the patches of warm stone as the five remaining cobras pursued him relentlessly.
He couldn't string together his usual fluid, multi-strike combinations. Every single kill had to be a desperate, singular exertion of pure force. He baited the first cobra into a lunge, sidestepping just enough to let its fangs graze the steel of his chest plate before bringing his arming sword down in a one-handed chop that severed its spine.
He used the dissolving light of the carcass as a momentary smokescreen, pivoting heavily to intercept the next two.
His right arm was screaming in protest, the sword feeling ten pounds heavier with every swing. He blocked a strike with the flat of his blade, the shock jarring his teeth and rattling all the way up to his shoulder before thrusting the tip deep into the serpent's open, hissing mouth.
A third he caught on a desperate backpedal, slicing blindly across its neck as it snapped at his heel.
But these explosive bursts were draining Henry's reserves at an unsustainable rate. As the raw haze of adrenaline finally began to thin, the reality of his physical condition began to assert itself. His peripheral vision began to strobe and tunnel, the cavern's dim, bioluminescent edges bleeding into blackness.
With every sluggish step he took, he could feel something deep beneath his breastplate actively grinding together a wet, unnatural shifting of bruised or splintered bone that sent white-hot spikes of electricity radiating directly into his spine.
The simple act of expanding his chest to draw in oxygen had become a grind. He couldn't manage anything more than shallow, rapid-fire gasps, and even those felt exactly like inhaling a handful of glass.
At this point, Henry's throat was so thick with blood he didn't think he could even force himself to speak to trigger the system restart.
There were just two cobras left. He was going to see it through to the end, no matter what that meant.
He tried to cut a sharp angle to distance himself, but his body finally betrayed him. The ruined center of gravity from his dead left arm, the absolute lack of oxygen, and the suffocating exhaustion all peaked at once. His boot slipped on a patch of wet stone.
Henry crashed hard onto his back.
He couldn't get up. His muscles completely refused to fire. He just lay there as the final two cobras violently converged on him. They reared back simultaneously and lunged, one snapping its jaws directly toward his face, the other aiming a lethal bite squarely at his exposed torso.
Despite the imminent, inescapable danger, the panic vanished.
All thought ceased. The cavern fell dead silent. He didn't think about his broken arm, his crushed ribs, or his failing lungs. He just moved.
Lying flat on his back, Henry perfectly shifted his hips. He launched his right boot upward in a perfectly timed kick, slamming his heel directly into the underside of the jaw of the cobra diving for his torso, violently redirecting its bite.
In the exact same millisecond, he smoothly brought his right arm up, sweeping his sword in a flawless, horizontal arc that cleanly decapitated the cobra diving for his face.
The kicked cobra writhed on the stone floor, its jaw shattered, hissing in pain.
Henry gave it no time to recover. Still lying on his back, he gripped his sword, wound his arm back, and threw his sword like a throwing knife. It spun through the air and buried itself perfectly between the thrashing serpent's eyes.
The final cobra dissolved into blue light.
Henry didn't see it fade. The exact second the sword left his hand, the last thread holding his consciousness together snapped, and the cavern went completely black.