​     At that juncture, Adam figured that strategy was beside the point. There were thousands of them and only one of him. React lightning fast and keep moving. That was as much strategy as he could muster.

     A warrior with eight arms came at him, eight swords in eight fists.

     He only had one skull, though.

     Adam put a bullet right through the center of it.

​     Four samurai came at him, swords flashing. Adam took two of them out with bullets to the chest. That's all he had time for before the other two samurai slashed at him with their swords. He dropped his rifles and grabbed his own swords in half an eyeblink's time.

​     A hundred foot giant reptile went to step on Adam as he fought the two samurai with blood gushing from wounds on his neck and chest.

     Damn!

​     He dove to avoid the massive foot and took a nasty sword slice to the abdomen in the bargain. 

​     A huge, bright yellow warrior took a swing at Adam. As Adam dodged the blow, he leaped onto the giant reptile's foot. The foot rose, and Adam went right along with it, standing upright like he rode a surfboard. Two warriors with ray guns and zipping through the air in anti-grav boots fired on Adam, missed him, and got the giant reptile's leg instead. The giant roared as Adam dove at the two warriors. He snapped one warrior's neck as he sailed through the air, then grabbed the warrior's weapon as he continued sailing.  

​     He landed on top of some sort of red, tentacle thing, causing it to buckle. He rolled off of it, and as he did another red thing that looked half insect and half ape jumped at him. At the same time, a gray, winged thing swooped down to snatch Adam up with its talons. Together, they rose into the sky. Once they were well above the fracas, Adam blew its head off with his ray gun, then dropped back into a pile of enemies, enemies with swords and maces and guns and ray blasters, enemies as small as a thumb and as big as a willow tree.   

​     "Where is he?" one blue faced mammal snapped. "Where did he go?"

​     Adam's hand rose from the pile of attackers to grip the mammal's throat.

​     "Gawk!"

​     "My sentiments exactly," Adam replied.

​     A blade sliced open Adam's gut. A bullet took an ear off. The wounds healed themselves almost immediately. It's not like they didn't hurt, though. He willed himself not to give the pain any consideration, but...but...yeow!

​     Wherever he spotted a weapon, he'd grab it to use until it emptied. He got his hands on one weapon that emitted a sound wave as powerful as a bomb blast. Adam pulled the trigger and kept it pulled as he spun. That gave him room to move, for a couple seconds anyway.

​     A tank dropped from the sky to all but land on top of him. The tank had this huge, artificial "eye" at its center. Such an irresistible target. Adam fired at the eye with his ray gun even as he dove sideways to keep from getting tackled by a seven foot, heavily armored warrior. Adam did no damage at all to the tank. Its eye let out a blast that caught Adam and Mr. Armor  and sent them flying twenty feet. The blast all but shredded the body Adam wore. He dropped to the ground in a wet, bloody mass. 

​     Fifty attackers jumped on him, creating a haystack-like effect. Cool. Adam needed a couple of seconds to recover, to heal, while they writhed all over the top of him and fought to get a grip on him. On the whole, he rather liked this new dream universe he found himself in, this Domitika.  The main reason?

​     He felt himself getting stronger with each passing second.

     So,

​     He counted to five.

     And then he began to fight his way towards the top of the haystack.

​     And, it seemed to him, at least, the harder he fought, the more powerful he got.

     So he fought.

     And he rose.

END OF CHAPTER TEN

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