The place felt tense. Worh wandered the empty streets, his mind drifting. As he walked, a robot blocked his path. The machine opened fire, but Worh didn't so much as flinch, moving at tremendous speed.
He destroyed it with a single punch, sending its parts flying, but one strange piece stayed floating in midair. It transformed into a suit of armor and went after him. Worh dodged its attempts to trap him inside, but then, desperately, he stopped, and magical chains clamped around his wrists. He struggled against them with all his strength. Without wasting a second, the armor seized him and sealed him inside. It carried him into a wormhole. Worh took in the vast landscape of the universe, then closed his eyes and began lashing out in every direction. The fabric of the wormhole shook, but it wasn't enough, and the passage only sped up. It dropped him inside a highly advanced laboratory. *Why am I in a laboratory? Why a place like this, of all places?* he wondered.
A voice cut off his thoughts. He turned his head and saw a scientist in red glasses. The air grew tense and colder.
"Hello, Worh. Welcome to..."
Before he could finish, a punch loaded with energy and force landed on his face and knocked him back slightly. He rubbed his nose with one hand, wiping away the grime kicked up by the blow.
"Well, well. Rather aggressive, aren't we?" the scientist said ironically.
Worh didn't answer. He only wondered, *Who is this guy?* The scientist sighed.
"Welcome to my laboratory. There are some of my research projects here, but that's not what matters," the scientist said, clearing his throat. "You're here because my master ordered me to run some tests, so I chose the two of you, bec..."
Worh cut him off, raising a hand to stop him.
"What do you mean, 'two'? Is someone else here?" Worh asked.
"He's in another corridor just like this one, but he's busy with his own affairs right now. What matters now is you. You're going to prove your strength by facing my oldest creation, which is 400 years old," the scientist said in a calm, analytical voice.
Worh stared in disbelief. *Four hundred years?!* His mind screamed, but the thought vanished quickly. He readied his fists and rubbed them together.
The air tightened.
The sound of metal striking the floor echoed down the corridor.
Something was close.
Worh slowly turned around.
There it stood: a four-armed robot with a single red motion-detecting eye, three meters tall.
Worh said nothing and stepped forward. In an instant he was right beside the machine, landing a heavy punch. It had no effect. The robot simply swiveled its one eye toward him, its mechanical mind already copying the force of the blow. Worh realized what was happening, but the robot, in one swift motion, returned the same heavy punch to his abdomen, and his pupils dilated.
His body went rigid, but he quickly hit back, forcing the enemy to retreat. Lightning struck the machine, blinding it for a millisecond, and the boy seized the chance. He drove a Strike Plus into its face and sent it flying two kilometers back.
The robot's memory was already processing the attack at full speed. Worh didn't hesitate. He hit it with a barrage of serious punches that did no damage but interrupted the machine's processing.
The protagonist pulled one hand back. A great spiral of air gathered around his fist and up his arm, and he planted his feet. The floor began to crack. Within seconds, Worh threw the punch.
It landed.
The machine was thrown back.
But meanwhile, something stood behind the enemy.
It was a black creature he recognized instantly. It matched the ones from the hospital where he had met the other protagonists. The creature was called Uhios.
The monster shot out a hand and seized the robot by the head.
The machine fought back, but its arm was ripped off brutally, along with its other limbs. A burst of electricity and oil spilled from the wounds.
The creature stood four meters tall and three meters wide. It opened its mouth and devoured the robot, absorbing it into its mass and stealing the data the robot had gathered.
The atmosphere turned suffocating.
The creature began charging Worh's own air punch, and a huge whirlwind formed around the monster.
It was drawing in all the air in the corridor. Worh clutched his throat, feeling the air drain from his lungs.
Without a second thought, he spun around and shot forward, fleeing the creature, but it activated the robot's speed and chased him, staying within a few centimeters as they both ran.
Worh dug his feet in as he ran.
The floor began to groan.
The chase was making it more fragile.
Down below, Kiro heard something moving above him. He looked up but found nothing, only ceiling. Above, Worh was running down his own corridor, unaware that his friend was right beneath him.
Worh picked up speed, dodging the obstacles the creature hurled at him.
His only goal in that moment: escape.
He thought hard for a solution and looked up. He noticed a red circle, leapt, and touched it.
A huge blaze engulfed him, though it didn't really hurt him.
*Huh, what is this?* Worh wondered. His inner voice seemed to react to the fire somehow.
The creature stopped, watching as Worh's body absorbed the flames.
Worh felt a tingling, and something hot spreading through his body.
*What... what is this I'm feeling?* the protagonist thought, trying to understand.
The remaining fire faded. Worh looked at his hand and sensed a new strength in it, since it was his main weapon in physical combat.
He slowly turned toward the monster. For a moment it seemed as if only the two of them existed. Everything around them faded away as they stared each other down.
Worh clenched his fists. "Let's see if you can handle me," he said, in a serious voice, with an expression that made the coming fight clear.
The air around them seemed to heat up.
Only one thought crossed the boy's mind: *Try to kill it!*
Without wasting a second, Worh smashed his fists together, and a huge blaze of fire launched at the creature.
A great cloud of smoke flooded the creature's senses. By pure instinct, it swatted at the attack and made it vanish.
*This is my chance,* he thought, moving before the thought was even finished.
He leapt onto the creature and drove a kick into its head.
The creature staggered, and without a word, Worh landed a blow to its neck, followed by a ninja kick.
The creature stumbled back a few centimeters.
It looked at Worh and read the expression on his face...
It said, *I'll kill you.*
The creature knew Worh meant it. The corridor suddenly felt smaller.
Slowly, it extended several tentacles and arranged them into a perfect circle with an empty space in the middle, all pointed at the protagonist.
A huge amount of black energy began to gather in the circle.
"I'll get serious too," the creature said, its voice intimidating and completely steady.
Worh let out a sound of surprise.
His eyes were lit by a vast energy concentrated into a single point.
"¡Shit!," he blurted.
The attack hit him, and he quickly shielded himself with his arms. The energy swallowed him.
The corridor behind him was completely consumed by the blast.
From inside it, Worh felt his body burning. His durability fought not to give way, and then a thought crossed his mind.
*I have to use all my strikes.*
Worh let out a roar and unleashed consecutive punches, serious punches, and Ultra Strikes all at once.
A great light tore through everything. The corridor was consumed entirely, the creature's energy and Worh's strikes colliding, and the room began to collapse.
Everything shattered into thousands of fragments.
Worh was dazed, his mind full of questions: *Is this the end? Am I already dead?*
The scientist looked up at the screen showing Worh Floating and the creature much farther away.
"Looks like I'll have to send him back to the world. That's enough analysis," he said to himself.
His finger moved toward a blue button and pressed it.
A portal opened behind the protagonist, and a powerful force dragged him in. It closed once he was inside.
Worh traveled through a wormhole. He opened both eyes and saw countless planets and galaxies he had never seen before.
But he noticed something invisible in the distance, like an elastic barrier. As if someone had placed it there to keep him from going where this path led, or perhaps to keep it from crossing with his own...
Suddenly he was shoved forward. The portal opened and dropped him onto the ground.
"Ah," Worh said as he fell.
He looked around and noticed the silhouettes of Kiro and a blue-haired boy he recognized as Sone.
Sone ran off, wincing in pain, with Kiro chasing after him.
Worh slowly got to his feet and realized he was shirtless, all his muscles on display.
*Great, I'll have to buy a new shirt,* he thought.
Without another thought, he ran after the other two protagonists.
The sky had already darkened, a sign that night was coming.
The boys' silhouettes slowly vanished on the horizon. The air blew calmly.
The flowers swayed gently, showing off their beauty, as if saying outright that everything had turned out fine.
At last, the planet was unharmed...