Funatic
patreon
The Gamer Chapter 1744 – Digestive Plague
🕑 Added 2024-09-06 15:51:37 +0000 UTC
“Prepare!” John shouted and strained whatever he could. Even a god’s control in their own Sanctum had limits. The Gamer knew that, he had seen Nightingale train that mental muscle and the troubles even a brilliant woman like her had.
Most importantly, they weren’t inside the domain of the god of gluttony quite yet. If that pool was the heart of Huitzilopochtli’s power, then that meant that the clap wasn’t a gesture to execute his own powers. Rather, it was a pre-coordinated signal for the god of sacrifice.
“To the usual place,” the Macuil said, then clapped his hands.
It was like a hammer strike hit John’s soul. The sensation was similarly painful as having a SEP ripped out of him without his volition, made slightly more bearable by the fact it came from the outside. John managed to withstand it, others were not as fortunate. Primarily, Nahua and Velka immediately vanishing was worrisome.
“I call upon the Shadow of Death, will he heed me?” Zelos’ swift chant put a sour expression on Macuil’s face.
“Stop being so useless,” Macuil cussed at his enslaved god and clapped his hands again.
John did not manage to resist a second time. Whatever Huitzilopochtli was doing, it was so much more drastic than the first rearrangement. With his entire being, he was yanked… somewhere.
It was an ocean of colours first, akin to the centre of the Atlantic Fuse, or a condensed version of the prismatic effect that occurred when two Illusion Barrier’s melded. The Gamer was rising and falling and he was doing neither. Dimensions themselves were more of a suggestion in this place of raw magic.
The colour parted around him, revealing a distant formation that rapidly came closer. A crimson wheel with eight crimson spokes, a metaphysical reflection of the roads made of staked souls that John had found all over the peninsula.
‘Anchors of the Eternal Sanctum,’ he now realized, alongside with that structure’s nature. ‘The powers of the other gods are joined with that of Macuil. He has nine Sanctums under his control. The segments of the spur and the axis. Or is it even ten for the spokes themselves?’
As swift as his thoughts went, the realms approached. John tore through some kind of outer bubble, then he was surrounded by rain.
The torrential downpour decreased visibility to almost nothing. John was under the yoke of gravity again, a preferable sensation to the helpless floating. Letting his vision blur, he focused entirely on his elemental senses. There was water, of course, and enough air to breathe. What he was looking for was the moment that state changed.
John stabilized his fall, preparing for the inevitable. A large body of fluid approached rapidly. Feet first, he sunk into it. He broke through a surface of water, then a secondary surface of something more gooey. Mana was retracted from his stores, Particle Skin flashed, and John made it back to the surface.
When he saw no land anywhere around him, John opened his inventory. His double back in the Guild Hall placed another pair of shoes in the shared space, which John then dragged into his character screen. One Magus Step later, he stood on top of the water’s surface. ‘They can’t do anything else, but it’ll do,’ he thought.
‘Fitting name,’ John thought and scanned his environment. Despite his calm thoughts, his heart was beating hard and fast in his chest. The situation had completely devolved past his reach.
“You let the arrow fly too early.” John turned to the rider that peeled out of the mist. Emerging radiant as ever, Glory’s form was a glowing outline in the darkness of the constant, tropical rain. “Not that I blame you for it. I would have acted the same, and if I would have done something, only the Grim Reaper himself could know better.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment,” John answered and shook his shoes. His socks were predictably soaked and these new shoes were not enchanted with comfort in mind. In fact, the only enchantment on them was water walking, of the variety that took a constant mana tax no less. It was better than swimming, however.
“Will you be fine?” Zelos asked, assessing the situation as much as John was.
The constant silver flashes from John’s legs justified the question. The water under his feet had a light pink hue and underneath it was a bog of the more viscous plague they called the Purple. “My mana regeneration is currently exceeding the damage taken,” John answered plainly, he leaned to the side, taking a demonstrative look behind Zelos. “I see that your master did not respond to the summon?”
“It is his choice. I must assume he has good reasons.”
As if on cue, the entirety of the Sanctum around them quaked at that moment. It was a tremor across all of John’s senses. He felt the wave in the air, the water, the shadows and the light, he felt it in himself and saw it with his own eyes. Hell, he could even smell it.
Zelos grinned. “And now we’re god-locked.”
“God-locked?” John asked, that was a new concept to him. “I assume that’s when two or more gods of similar power clash within Sanctums?”
Zelos nodded solemnly. “The White Wanderer is in the Sanctum with us and has seen it fit to summon the Necropolis into the battlefield. It’ll diminish the control Huitzil and Macuil have.”
“Another ray of hope amongst the others,” John mumbled, updating his mental map of the situation. His right hand was meanwhile typing away at the Harem Comms. His familiars had moved outside of mental contact range. That was an inconvenience and not a small one, but ultimately just that: an inconvenience. “Can they still listen to us?”
“It is still their Sanctum, even if control is diminished. It is best to assume so.” Zelos’ head turned as the Gamer started walking. In passing, the Gamer threw a smartphone towards the rider. It was connected to John via his technomancy Skill. A quick and easy way to share what the Gamer was gathering at the moment.
The two critical issues John had at the moment were the continued Lorylim invasion and the new situation he found himself in. Both of these situations were, however, solvable. The updates Gnome had written to him, and was still sending whenever she found the time, detailed that the familiars had been moved to some kind of flower field, together with the Lorylim. The Purple there was spread via pollen. Important in that scenario was that Nia had managed to catch a ride with them. How, he did not dare to ask.
The first suggestion of his familiars was to teleport to him. John denied this. Ehtra, Metra, and the elemental girls would stay in their current engagement until he needed them elsewhere. Once the Lorylim were dealt with, he could narrow down on a single threat.
The god-lock made the strategic situation beyond that tenable. Macuil had to use some sort of resource to move them around like this and the number of extremely powerful people around would have made keeping them contained difficult. John’s first plan had been to just struggle against the god until one side died of exhaustion. Not the best plan, but the only one he had seen as available to him initially.
Now that getting teleported around was no longer a threat, consolidating forces was a more viable route of action. John’s heartbeat steadily calmed. ‘I miscalculated, but this is very much doable,’ he thought. ‘Macuil is the single most powerful being I have seen so far, bar Gaia, but he’s just one.’
Putting aside the Lorylim situation, John had four other problem areas to contend with. Lee, Beatrice, Claire, Delicia and the Creator Puppet had also been pulled into the Eternal Sanctum, together with the airplane. Best case, that was a targeted effort. Worst case, Macuil had just reactivated his sphere of influence and had pulled the Abyss of all of Yucatan into the Eternal Sanctum like Enki had done for the Death Zone. So far, it seemed to be the former.
After that was the situation of Lorelei and the Grim Reaper, who were still together. That they had been pulled in from across the peninsula made things more worrisome, but considering where they had been, it also made a fair amount of sense that they had remained in reach.
Another issue were all those of his harem that had been in the chamber with him at that time. Aclysia, Momo, and Rave were out there, each of them in their own individual environment.
All three of those situations did not require an immediate intervention. The plane crew he was still present for and the Grim Reaper made for a rather reliable bodyguard. It was the last situation that worried John the most.
He had no idea where Nahua and Velka were.
One was a shattered mess, the other was not strong enough to stand on her own in this situation. He had a read on neither’s location. A problem he needed to solve. Letting his bird-cat die was not an option.
For the moment, John continued to walk. He was scanning the environment, attempting to find any way out or around the place. There was rain, water, and Purple, nothing else as far as all his senses could perceive.
John sensed Zelos opening a document on the smartphone and typing in a question: ‘What do you think the purpose was in teleporting us away?’
‘Digestion.’ John made an off-handed gesture towards the ground. ‘It struck me as odd from the start that the Purple kills by turning people into jelly. I suppose that’s just to make it easier to slurp us all up. He’ll keep us trapped in here until we’re too weak to put up a fight.’
‘How tasteless,’ Zelos commented.
‘It’s another sign that we can win this,’ John wrote back. ‘If fighting us head on was easy, then he would have just done that.’
‘You’re looking at this too logically. I believe a creature like that would want to see us waste away just because it is funny to him.’
John could only acknowledge that as a possibility. He chose to believe that there was a chance of victory, because he needed that chance to exist. Zelos had the benefit of (conditional) immortality. If the fight was futile for him, that was just a temporary inconvenience. The Gamer benefitted from no such blessing.
‘You wouldn’t happen to be able to take us to somewhere specific?’ John asked via the smartphone.
‘I do not sense any place that currently demands my attention,’ Glory answered.
‘What if I told you there was a cat that needed saving?’
The golden Horseman gave that question an honest pause, but ultimately responded with a shaking of his head. There was no easy ways out of this one, so John had to rely on either stumbling over something or wait unti-
Lee: Alright, so I may or may not be able to ‘hack’ into the mainframe.
John’s eyebrow shot up and he stopped right where he was.
Scarlett: Explain.
Lee: The god-block gives me some security breaches… Man, Sanctums are weird, but that’s not important right now. Fact is that I can pry my way in there.
‘Inconceivable,’ Zelos wrote. ‘There’s no Fateweaver that could stick their hand into a divine confrontation.’
Smug, the Gamer answered, ‘You better start believing that my Lee can be this powerful.’
Lee: Rel, tell the Grim Reaper I’m about to help him with his side of the struggle. Just so he’s not surprised.
Lee: Let’s see how much I can pull this together…
John and Zelos waited with bated breath. It was rare for the Gamer to be an entirely unmoving actor in a confrontation like this, but sometimes the only thing that could be done was to sit things out until an opportunity arose.
The rain diminished.
John sensed it before he could see it. The curtains of pinkish grey around them were still thick, but the size and number of the drops were getting less. Soon, the visual effects were clear as well. Sunlight began to peek in through the layer of clouds. Then, the sunlight died.
John had seen a tear in the sky before. Last time it had happened, he had seen a nuke drop through, followed by an army of Soviets. That had been dramatic. This was fantastical.
The Necropolis descended upside down from the sky. An entire city, several hundred thousand strong, stretching with all of its buildings from one side of the firmament to the other. The perspective was confusing, as if he was viewing the city of the dead through a fish-eye lens.
In the heaven of dark stone, undead lights arose. John had to admit to being awed, truly awed, in a way he had not been for quite a while, as he watched legions of undead numbering in the hundreds each stream down from the Necropolis on ethereal rivers of souls and on wings of skeletal steeds. It was as if he was right there when Aragorn brought the undead to the war for Minas Tirith.
“We will chat again later. For now, I must fulfil my most sacred obligations to the greatest of gods!” Glory launched a manifested spear heavenwards. “I entrust to you the situation with the Lorylim. THE GRAND-MARSHAL OF DEATH RETURNS HOME!” With those words, he turned into a golden streak. In the far-off distance, John spotted a red and white spot similarly rising to the sky.
Then, the Grim Reaper spoke, his voice like a deadly whisper heard in all the lands.
“Traitor, devourer of friends, killer of Atlas, Mācuīlcōzcacuāuhtli, I deem you unfit. Fear death, for it is coming for you.”
‘Maybe I don’t need to be the protagonist in every confrontation,’ John decided then and there. ‘I supposed I’ll relegate myself to support staff.’ He stretched his mental muscles in every direction. The connections with his familiars were faint now, which was enough to sense their location. The dividing line between the segments of the Eternal Sanctum appeared to have been bridged by Lee’s efforts. That also put them on a clock.
John pulled up the Harem Comms and punched in the new plan.
John: My instructions are simple: We’ll follow the Grim Reaper’s lead. Take care of the Lorylim and the Azure Tribe. Find Velka. Find Nahua. Try to find each other. Support the Illuminati where you find them. Let’s kill an evil god.
Macuil would not get away with this.
Comments
Phraxius
I'm inclined to agree with John - if anyone's got a bone in this fight and the strength to carry the day, it's the Grim Reaper himself. Besides, no one wants evil fungal monsters at their back in an important fight.
gordianTangle
I'm very excited for the retroactive quest rewards we are going to get, since almost certainly this counts for, if not the war quest system, than several *nice* achievements
Marko
Loving this, love fantasy powerful forces at play
Amosion
Gotta say this arc of the story is quickly becoming my new favorite. It is really nice seeing John in actual danger, fighting forces he isn't ready for yet. It feels like it has been a while since he has had to go all out like this.
icequeen52
Fuck yesss, let's go!!!
){kind=link}