Engines on Sacred Land
It started with a sound the grasslands had never heard before.
A low mechanical hum. Then metal grinding. Then the sharp cough of diesel.
The wind carried it long before the shapes arrived—massive machines rolling across the earth like armored beetles. Excavators. Pile drivers. Cranes.
And behind them—humans.
Dozens of them. Dressed in bright vests and hard hats. Some dragged tents. Others held blueprints. They walked across the sacred plains, pointing and shouting like they owned the sky.
Near the ridge, a golden retriever named Retarded was running freely when he saw them.
He stopped cold. Ears perked. Tail stiff.
Then he turned.
And sprinted back.
—
Within minutes, Retarded reached headquarters. His fur was matted with sweat and dust. Tongue flailing. Eyes wide.
Norman stood at the center of the camp, flanked by his top dogs. Retarded didn’t waste a second.
“Humans,” he barked. “Machines. Big ones. They’re setting up tents. They’ve brought paper maps.”
Norman’s eyes narrowed.
He didn’t speak.
He just ran.
—
When Norman arrived, the machines had already dug trenches into the land.
Dirt piles rose like shallow graves. Flags marked invisible borders. Generators buzzed near a half-assembled prefab structure.
And then—he saw it.
Just a few yards ahead, a lone dog was barking at the humans.
One worker shouted.
“Shut that damn mutt up!”
The dog kept barking. Warning. Defending. Doing what he thought was right.
Another worker stepped forward. No hesitation.
He pulled the cord on a chainsaw.
The engine screamed.
One clean slice.
The dog split in half before he hit the dirt.
Blood sprayed across the man’s boots.
“Fucking mutt,” the worker growled.
“Good dogs don’t block roads. Cunt.”
—
Norman stopped walking.
His eyes froze on the mutilated body. His mouth opened slightly, but no sound came out.
Behind him, the dogs who’d followed him stood still at first. Then—
One of them growled.
Then another stepped forward.
“I’m going over there,” one snarled. “I’m gonna rip his fucking head off.”
And just like that—
The war drums started beating.
In silence.
In blood.
In a voice only the grass and the ghosts could hear.
Between Two Worlds
One of the younger dogs—a stocky, scarred pit bull with eyes full of fire—was already crouched low, ready to launch forward.
His name was Jacky.
Small body. Short temper. Pure muscle packed into a canine bullet.
Just as he pushed off—
Norman’s hand slammed down on the back of his neck.
“Jacky,” Norman growled. “Don’t. Let me understand what this is first.”
Jacky snarled softly beneath his breath, but didn’t resist.
He stayed.
But the others didn’t.
Three dogs had already charged ahead.
Before Norman could speak again, they were across the field—fangs bared, claws out, fury in motion.
The construction workers screamed.
One man tried to run. Another tripped over a generator. A third didn’t get away fast enough—teeth sank into his calf. Another dog latched onto someone’s shin. They couldn’t shake them off. Couldn’t outrun them.
“Help! They’re biting my fucking leg—!”
One worker, still conscious through the pain, reached into a tool case.
Pulled out a rotary drill—an industrial one.
He didn’t even think.
He shoved the spinning bit forward—
—straight into the skull of a dog.
The drill kept spinning for a second after the dog’s body hit the ground.
Then stopped.
—
Norman saw it all.
He had been walking closer—slow, careful—when it happened.
And now, he stopped.
His eyes went blank for a moment.
He inhaled through his nose.
Then roared.
“STOP!!”
His voice split the air like thunder.
Every dog on the field froze.
Then turned.
Then backed away.
One by one, they returned to Norman—heads low, fur raised, eyes burning.
Blood dripped from a few of their mouths.
The workers, bruised and bleeding, stared at the man standing in the center of the pack.
One pointed at him and shouted:
“What the hell’s wrong with you?!”
“Control your damn dogs!”
“You need to have them on leashes, man! You let them roam like this? Are you insane?”
Norman stood there.
Silent.
He didn’t know what to say.
His jaw clenched.
His mind blurred.
His feet refused to move.
Then, after several seconds:
“I’m… I’m sorry,” he said quietly.
“I’ll discipline them. I didn’t mean—”
“You didn’t mean?! You know how many permits we filed to be here?”
“We’re building a fucking Disney park, man!”
“Where the hell have you been? It’s been on the news for months!”
Norman blinked.
“Disney…”
He muttered the word like it had no meaning.
Then he looked down.
At the grass.
At the pawprints.
At the blood.
“This is… our sacred land.”
His voice was barely a whisper. Not to them.
To himself.
He was talking to himself.
Sacred land… and they want to put a theme park on it.
—
Inside him, something cracked.
Two forces began to pull in opposite directions.
He had never thought about it before.
Never really needed to.
But now—he couldn’t avoid it.
Am I their king?
Or am I just a man pretending to be one of them?
His feet stayed still.
His chest rose slowly.
And far behind him, the dogs stood waiting.
And behind them… came the sound of drills powering up again.
Humanity Forfeited
Norman stood in silence.
His eyes locked onto the man who had killed one of his dogs with a drill.
The drill still rested on the ground beside the corpse.
The worker’s gloves were stained red.
Norman’s jaw clenched.
A single thought echoed in his mind:
If I want to protect this sacred land… I can’t be human anymore.
For one long minute, he didn’t speak.
Then, slowly, he raised one hand—pointed at the man.
His voice was low. Clear. Final.
“Jacky,” he said. “Go kill him.”
Jacky’s eyes lit up like fireworks.
He didn’t wait for a second command.
He kicked off the dirt and launched forward like a missile wrapped in muscle—
a pit bull-shaped bullet hurtling through air and rain.
He hit the man square in the shoulder—
flesh met flesh with a wet, meaty slap—
and clung to him like glue.
The man screamed, flailing wildly, trying to shake Jacky loose.
He managed to rip him off for a second—
but Jacky twisted in midair and clamped his jaws onto the man’s neck.
One breath.
One second.
Then—
Death Roll.
Jacky spun once. Just once.
It was enough.
The man’s spine snapped.
His head jerked to the side at an unnatural angle.
By the time Jacky released him, the worker was dead.
Just like that.
—
The rest of the workers saw it happen.
They dropped everything.
Screamed. Ran.
Jumped into their machines—trucks, cranes, rigs—anything with wheels.
Engines roared.
Mud flew.
They didn’t look back.
In the chaos, they left behind a dozen tents, scattered tools, crates of food, and bags of supplies.
The site was silent again within minutes.
Only the wind remained.
And the blood.
Norman stepped forward. His voice rose over the field.
“Hey boys—feed yourselves.”
“There’s plenty of food today.”
The dogs came running.
They swarmed the abandoned camp like hyenas, crashing into crates and shredding wrappers.
They found meat, sausages, fruits, vegetables, cookies, chocolate.
It was chaos. Glorious, gluttonous chaos.
Some dogs dug through backpacks and chewed through Ziploc bags of nuts.
Others tore into raw meat and half-cooked steaks that had been left near a propane burner.
One dog even dragged a box of powdered sugar across the mud, leaving a white trail like snowfall.
In the far corner of the camp, a few dogs crowded around something—chewing, growling, biting.
They weren’t eating rations.
They were eating the corpse.
The man Jacky had killed… or what was left of him.
Half his body was already gone.
Blood soaked the dirt.
No one stopped them.
Norman didn’t comment.
He stood on a patch of grass near a collapsed tent, watching it all unfold.
Then—
a strange quiet.
One dog dropped to the ground with a thud.
Another a few feet away started convulsing.
Then another.
Three dogs had eaten the chocolate.
And now, they were dying.
Limbs twitching.
Eyes rolling.
Tongues lolling out, frothing at the sides.
They didn’t even know what killed them.
They died smiling.
—
Norman exhaled.
No one said a word.
The camp was now theirs.
But the price of leadership—the price of choosing—had just begun.
He had claimed the sacred land.
And in return—
his humanity was gone.
Total Concentration Sniffing
The next day.
It started with a single collapse.
One dog dropped dead in the grass—no sound, no warning.
A minute later, another fell.
Then a third—
not collapsing, but spinning in place, chasing its tail in tight, frantic circles.
It twirled and twirled… then hit the ground.
Gone.
The rest didn’t understand.
But Norman’s eyes locked forward.
This wasn’t illness.
This wasn’t food.
This was execution.
Someone was sniping them.
—
Then it got worse.
Jacky—his most trusted fighter, the pit bull with fire in his veins—ran over to check the last body.
And just as he reached it…
His limbs seized.
He fell.
Four legs twitching violently, mouth locked open in a frozen growl.
He scratched the air like he was drowning.
Norman watched it all.
He didn’t flinch.
Didn’t blink.
But his fists clenched tighter and tighter.
He wanted to run in.
To pull Jacky back.
To save him.
But he knew what open ground meant now.
Death.
So he stood still.
And watched.
And Jacky—
Jacky thrashed harder. Legs kicking. Ribs rattling. Eyes wide with panic.
And then… he stopped.
Just like that.
“Oh no,” Norman muttered.
“Jacky’s gone.”
—
Norman closed his eyes.
His breath slowed.
His nose twitched.
He activated a technique he’d trained for months:
Total Concentration Sniffing.
He dropped to all fours.
Elbows bent. Palms flat. Chest low to the grass.
He sniffed—left and right—then pushed his nose close to the dirt and inhaled deep.
His senses sharpened.
Time seemed to freeze.
He filtered through hundreds of smells: grass, sweat, blood, machine oil, dog piss, rain.
Then—
There it was.
A sharp wave of middle-aged man grease.
Thick. Rancid. Human. Unmistakable.
The kind of smell that clung to jackets and neck folds.
The scent of cheap deodorant fighting a losing war.
It was faint—but focused.
And it was coming from the two o’clock direction.
Roughly one full kilometer away.
Elevated. Maybe 3 meters off the ground.
Norman opened his eyes.
All he saw was a tree.
Far away. Tiny as an ant from this distance.
No man. No gun. No glint of metal.
But he didn’t need to see.
He knew.
Target locked.
The Mission to Erase Dogkind
Norman didn’t hesitate.
He bolted forward on all fours—nothing but grass, dust, and frogs beneath him.
In under thirty seconds, he had closed the distance at full speed—150 kilometers per hour.
The hunter in the tree saw the blur.
He squinted.
“What the hell… is that a dog?”
“Wait—no. That’s a man.”
Norman was already beneath the tree.
He didn’t stop.
He pounced.
A claw slashed upward.
The hunter barely had time to react. He pulled out his long-range rifle and tried to raise it—
SNAP.
Norman’s claw sliced the gun clean in half. One motion. No resistance.
—
The hunter staggered back on the branch, breathing hard. But then… he laughed.
He adjusted his stance and grinned through his stubble.
“Your speed’s impressive.”
“Honestly? If I hadn’t seen Mario chasing a train at 200 km/h a few years ago… you’d be the fastest man I’ve ever seen.”
Norman didn’t react.
He stepped forward, claws ready, eyes dark.
“Why?”
“Why are you killing our kind?”
“Why are you hunting Dogkind?”
The hunter blinked.
A flicker of confusion—then amusement.
He chuckled.
Then burst out laughing.
“Dogkind?”
“A grown-ass man calling himself a dog… siding with a bunch of strays to fight humans?”
“That’s rich.”
(He wiped his nose, shaking his head.)
“You’ve gone full delusional.”
Norman didn’t flinch.
But behind him—dozens of dogs had arrived, following their leader’s scent and sprinting through the plains. They surrounded the base of the tree, growling, barking, their eyes full of fury.
The hunter noticed.
He didn’t panic.
He just sniffed… and flicked his nose with a single finger.
A lump of mucus—barely visible—shot from his fingertip.
CRACK.
It zipped through the air like a bullet.
And it struck one of the smallest dogs—the little teddy-sized one—in the forehead.
The dog collapsed.
It rolled on the ground for half a minute. Twitched. Whimpered.
And then it stopped moving.
Dead.
Norman’s eyes widened. He took one step forward.
The hunter finally jumped down from the tree.
He landed light.
Drew a dagger—held in reverse grip.
His tone was calm. Professional.
“I’m what you might call a minor name in the underworld. A high-level killer.”
“The name’s John Doe.”
“Years ago, I trained under Mario. You could say I was one of his best students.”
(He tilted his head slightly.)
“Today, I’ve been hired by the construction syndicate behind this site.”
“My mission is simple—”
“Erase every last dog.”
Shadow Duel
Norman stood firm in the tall grass.
His claws were out. His eyes locked forward.
“I’ll give you one last chance,” he said.
“Leave this land and never come back. If you do, I’ll act like nothing happened.”
“I’ll spare your life.”
John Doe didn’t answer with words.
He just laughed.
Low at first—then louder.
Then he crouched, dagger tight in hand, and shot forward like a phantom.
Fast. Silent. Focused.
He turned into a shadow.
Norman dropped low to all fours and sprinted to meet him—faster than thunder, sharper than the wind. His claws gleamed. His speed was impossible.
He, too, became a shadow.
The two streaks clashed and passed each other—two beasts, two shapes—crossing in an instant.
They landed behind one another.
Motionless.
Both upright.
For a few seconds, nothing happened.
Then Norman trembled.
His right hand rose slowly to his chest.
Blood.
He touched the wound—deep, diagonal—slashed from his abdomen all the way to his collarbone. His breathing stuttered. His body wobbled.
But he didn’t fall.
He grit his teeth and whispered:
“You’re fast…”
Behind him, John Doe remained still.
Smirking.
He nodded slowly.
“Thanks for the compliment.”
“But… you’re not bad yourself—”
And then his head tilted sharply to one side.
At a strange, unnatural angle.
Frozen.
Because his throat and spine had been shredded clean through.
Norman’s claw had found its mark mid-pass.
John Doe was already dead.
Still standing, still trying to finish his sentence, still wearing a faint smirk.
But gone.
His body finally slumped.
Face first into the grass.
—
Far away, in a glass-walled office downtown, a furious man slammed his fist against a desk.
He wore a suit with gold cufflinks and a pin shaped like a skyscraper.
“Why the hell did you send someone named John Doe?!” he yelled.
“You hear that name and it screams nobody!”
“We need someone heavy. Someone who delivers results.”
His assistant knelt on the ground, trembling.
“Y-Yes, sir. We understand. We’ll bring in someone stronger.”
“Next time… we’ll end it.”
“Once and for all.”