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Book 6: Chapter 2 - Path to the End (RAW)
🕑 Added 2025-05-08 14:12:25 +0000 UTCChapter 2 - The Path to the End
We can rivet the hardest alloys into a femur and coax myomers to coil like predatory vines, multiplying a patient’s strength ten-fold; we can lace the prefrontal cortex with quantum filaments that let thought leap whole logical chasms in a single pulse. Yet every few hundred grafts, the augment reaches past tissue into temperament. The host awakens fluent in new reflexes—but speaks with a cadence their loved ones have never heard, loves with unfamiliar appetites, dreams in colors no psychometric chart can name. The physiology is immaculate; the personality drift is a riddle that endures beyond the microscope, magnet, or scalpel.
- Extract from the surgical log of Dr. Anika Vale, Chief Neuro-Augmentist of Mimir Deep.
There was a dirtiness to everything, a pollution that seeped into the floor, the walls, the people. Into the soul. No amount of chemical cleaners could keep it at bay; in fact, the more they used, the worse it seemed. The world I’d come from—the second world—felt so pure, almost virginal, by comparison.
This place was an old, hard-bitten, disease-ridden whore long past her prime. But even old whores hid treasures that could be plundered and exploited.
Much like this apartment, I noticed. Stacks of fancy-looking computer equipment were heaped on top of each other without rhyme or reason, cords and cables snaking between a multitude of unpowered screens whose functions I could only guess at. All of it looked rather expensive and valuable.
This entire chapter carried an uncanny sense of déjà vu, as if I’d lived it before in a dream I could not quite remember.
“Tell me what I should do to make money quickly,” I asked Sol.
“Well… you got any more of that Aurum?”
I rummaged in my pouch. “Gold? That was the last of it—the price to save your life, I believe.” It was good to remind people of favors owed and given.
“You could make some quick Credits doing… whatever it was you did to Gran.”
“Those who need it—can they actually pay me these Credits?”
Solarin bit her bottom lip. “Well, this isn’t exactly the richest neighborhood. Err… you’re good at fighting, right? At least as good as a Fifth Circle, I reckon.”
“I believe I am level twenty-five,” I said flatly.
“That’s a terrible joke…”
I cut her off. “Velocity Rush was level twenty-three by comparison, so my scales might be different.”
Bad news if the scales were linear: Apex, a Tenth-Circle Meta, could be over a hundred levels—an impossibility, I hated to admit, even for me.
“I am not a Meta creature, as you like to label me. I am just a normal man,” I said, rolling my shoulders with no small amount of pride.
A normal man, that is, before you counted all the Divine gifts and bonus attributes earned through creating mountains of corpses.
Sol gasped, then chuckled. “Now you’re just lying through your teeth…”
“It is rude to call a guest a liar, Solarin Varnell,” came a strong voice.
Sol’s grandmother entered from the bedroom—a woman well past her middle years, with patrician features. Her eyes, a dark coffee brown, were sharp and calculating. After my healing spell, strands of Sol’s color had returned to her silver hair, rallying against the encroaching gray.
“First, thank you.” She held a small device in her hand, tapping its screen. “Most odd. No Ident chip at all, which can mean only one of two things,” she muttered. “The name is Casia, though I can’t pull up yours.”
Where technology failed her, my magic did not.
Casia Whitlock - Net Logicae [Meta-human lvl.23]
Health: 114/114
Stamina: 24/24
Mana: 20/20
I gave her a superior smile. “I am Gilgamesh. A pleasure to meet you, Mrs. Whitlock.”
She frowned for a moment at this revelation, but took it in her stride. Solarin’s grandmother would have been an adept player of Blessings. “Hah! Haven’t heard that name in over twenty years, Mister Gilgamesh. My thanks again—I’d already made peace with the end and wasn’t sure we could even cover the recycling fees.”
“That’s all very well and good, but you can show your appreciation by telling me how to make quick Credits—lots of them.”
“Doesn’t everyone want to know?” she replied, tapping her device. “There are ways, but they come with risk.”
I was growing frustrated—irritation, my old friend, had begun to rear its head. “Just… please. Tell me my options.”
She pursed her lips. “There are bounties posted by the Heroes’ Guild. A few of those will net you decent Credits and might even earn you a Heroic Recommendation. You want access to the Inner, right?”
“I believe that would further my cause. And what did you mean earlier by ‘one of two things’ and the Ident-chip nonsense?” I asked, crossing my arms in impatience.
“Without a chip, aren’t you a Pureblood—a man from the Inner? I thought you an exile. So you’re either that, an Illegal, or, more sinisterly, an alien. You have the look of one, a Pureblood that is. I assumed you were slumming here with us Sec’ 23 folk; Inner Purebloods can be capricious. And your casual use of what I think is Overtech—random, but welcome—hardly contradicts that.”
I was getting tired of this NPC dangling little bits of exposition in front of me. What did it matter anyway? This whole place was not real. Were it not for the presence of high-level monsters in this place, I would have been tempted to just start slaughtering everything and everybody around me. But, I could not afford to do a bad pull in such early stages of a dungeon run.
“Your answers give me more questions. You speak in riddles, meant either to mock or annoy. Just tell me my options; so far, I’ve heard only one. I have no problem with the killing—it’s the finding I do not look forward to when it comes to bounty quests…”
Casia tapped the edge of her device, and suddenly a flickering image appeared. It looked like a city map in holographic miniature. It continued to update, finally displaying what lay beneath. A crimson pulse throbbed beneath a jagged sprawl of what appeared to be tunnels.
“If the Heroes’ Guild bounties feel too… pedestrian,” she said, voice dropping, “there’s the Crucible.”
Solarin grimaced. “Gran, that pit’s illegal even by Sec’ 23 standards.”
“All profit is illegal to someone,” Casia countered. She fixed her eyes on me. “The Crucible is an underground tournament—cybernetically enhanced bruisers, dangerous Metas, even the odd ESP-active with a nosebleed hobby. Fights are streamed on a dark node across this local section of the Com-Net. Wagers run hot, purses run hotter.”
“How hot?” I asked.
“Champion’s purse last cycle was fifty thousand Credits and a Heroic Recommendation if you’re forged clean enough to fool most scanners.” She flicked the figure onto the wall—glittering numbers that looked like salvation. “And, there are other prizes. Each win along the bracket pays out, escalating until the final. It’s a lie, of course, but there is a street myth that if you win ten championships, you get a Vote.”
Solarin leaned near, wary. “That Heroic Recommendation won’t get past the Inner Inner city scanners,” she commented with a shake of her head. “Security up there is too tight; times have changed since your time, Gran. And a Vote is not what it is all cracked up to be.”
Casia sniffed, but nodded slowly.
“My granddaughter might indeed have a point,” she paused for a moment as if mulling over this information. “Also, it’s not just the fighters you should worry about. The Crucible’s run by the Covenant—body-hackers who treat combatants like test beds. You lose a bout, they might ‘upgrade’ you without consent.” She mimed air quotes that dripped with disgust. “Or take something away at least. They like to think that not everyone needs all their bits.”
“I have never known defeat.” A surge of grim excitement rippled through me. “These fights… they are to the death?”
“Bloodthirsty one, aren’t you?” Casia said with an appraising look, still shaking her head at whatever her tablet-looking device was telling her about me. “That’s the strangest thing, I see not even the most basic of Augment about you,” the old woman commented, shaking her head. “That archaic-looking suit that you are wearing seems to be unpowered. Yet, according to Sol here, you were able to face down Gracious Jobe and soundly defeat one of his pet Metas. You seem to command Overtech or a super rare ESP ability. You, my saviour, are an impossibility made flesh.”
“I speak the truth of things, I have no reason to lie to you,” I stated, gritting my teeth.
“Why are you eager to make Creds so quickly?” Solarin blithely.
“Because I am working with a time limit,” I replied with a huff. “Do not press me more on this.
Some form of time dilation occurred within the Trials of the Goddess—of that, there was ample documentation. The trouble was, it could go either way, though more often than not, time moved faster inside the Trial than outside.
“So tell me, where is the location of this… this crucible?”
“Sublevel G-Zero,” Casia replied, running a hand through her hair. “Below the old mag-rail. Only one sanctioned entrance: a freight lift off Cobalt Street. Password changes nightly. I can procure tonight’s phrase, but the buy-in is steep—ten thousand Credits or a single piece of high-grade tech.”
My gaze drifted over the apartment’s electronic hoard. “I suppose I could relieve this place of some of its clutter.”
Solarin tensed. “Touch our stuff and you’ll meet a Circle you’ve never seen, level twenty-five or not.”
I laughed, the sound echoing off stained walls. “Calm yourself. I have something better.” I produced my Vessel weapon, letting the living weapon dance before their eyes under the artificial lights of the hab unit. “Would such a thing be enough?”
“Fancy Drone weapon. Possibly more Overtech.” Casia’s pupils dilated. “That’ll more than cover entry. But heed my warning, Gilgamesh: the Crucible doesn’t stop at first blood. It stops when the crowd’s satisfied—or when the Med-Drones scrape you off the floor.”
“The fickle nature of crowds has never frightened me,” I said with a dark laugh, remembering sands and stone soaked in the blood of the unworthy. “Death will drink deeply this day, but not of me. Tell me, Casia, who’s tonight’s favorite?”
“A Meta called Iron Seraph,” Sol answered, reluctantly impressed. “Ex-military frame, full sub-dermal plating, rumored to channel kinetic energy through a psionic loop. twelve straight victories.” She swallowed hard. “Eleven of those resulted in the deaths of his opponents. They say he laughs while he crushes skulls.”
“Then it will be an ironic turn when his skull is crushed in turn.” I squared my shoulders, feeling eagerness ripple through me. I would drink deeply from Death’s prepared cup. “Prepare whatever guidance you have. At dusk, we descend.”
Casia powered down the map. “Very well. But remember: in the Crucible, glory is cheap—survival is the real currency.”
I flashed a grin sharp enough to cut steel. “Then I intend to get very rich indeed. Also, I can not help but realize that fifty thousand does not sound quite enough to cover getting access into this Inner.”
“It will get you halfway there. Give me a bit of time to come up with something, got the first few ideas of a plan in my mind. Oh, and I think I will stay here. Got to get all of this gear sorted out so I can get back in business and help you out as much as I can. I’ll stay with you through Sol’s feed. Not to mention that those sorts of places aren’t really for people around my age.”
It took me everything I had to bite back a threat, a warning against treachery.
***
The night began to cloak the city, deeper than it had any right to, as Solarin guided me through tangled alleys and narrow backstreets. It seemed almost a waste to go through such dirty environs. After all, the girl had even gone to the bother to spend precious water cleaning herself up, and, unlike Gracious Jobe’s prediction, she had cleaned up admirably.
Yet, here we were.
The squalid buildings around us leaned drunkenly, graffiti staining their cracked exteriors in bursts of neon and spite. Rain dripped from twisted fire escapes, hissing faintly as it touched the heated metal of exposed ventilation ducts. My archaic armor of black and gold drew stares from the denizens, huddled groups that lingered in doorways and beneath flickering streetlamps, their eyes sharp with suspicion and sometimes envy.
"You don't exactly blend in, do you?" Sol muttered, glancing nervously at a trio of scavengers tracking us from the shadows.
"Blending in was never my strength," I replied curtly, meeting each probing stare until they flinched and looked away.
"Maybe not, but being discreet might've made this easier," she sighed, ducking under a sagging awning. "Cobalt Street’s just ahead—cut through here, it’ll save us time."
The shortcut took us down an even narrower path, choked with refuse and forgotten debris. The sour stink of decay was thick, mixing unpleasantly with the bitter tang of oil and rust. The dim glow from a single failing neon sign offered scant illumination, shadows dancing wildly around us as we moved forward.
Without warning, a thin, ragged figure lunged from the darkness, hand darting out with practiced swiftness toward my belt pouch. Instinct drove my reaction faster than thought. My armored hand snapped out in a vicious backhand, connecting squarely with the thief’s jaw. A sickening crack echoed loudly as his neck twisted at an unnatural angle. The would-be thief crumpled instantly, hitting the ground like a discarded doll.
You have slain a Human. 17 experience gained.
Solarin stumbled back, eyes wide in shock and horror. "Gilgamesh! You... you killed him!"
I glanced down briefly at the corpse, expression indifferent. "He chose poorly, but he gave me more experience than I had expected."
“What are you going on about?” She pressed herself against a wall, breath coming quick and shallow. "But... it was just a petty thief."
"Petty or not, actions have consequences," I replied coldly, brushing imaginary dust from my armor. "Remember, Solarin, hesitation breeds weakness."
She swallowed hard, her gaze lingering fearfully on the still form before turning away sharply. "Yeah, whatever. He was probably an addict or something, anyway. Let's just get to the Crucible," she whispered shakily, refusing to meet my eyes.
Moments later, we arrived at the entry to the Crucible—an unmarked, rust-covered freight lift at the end of Cobalt Street. A solitary figure guarded the lift, a towering brute whose flesh was a patchwork of metal and synthetic fibers. His crimson gaze tracked us warily.
"Tonight’s password," he growled.
I leaned forward slightly, voice low and steady. "Iron Eclipse."
He nodded once, stepping aside without another word as the freight lift's door screeched open, revealing a dimly lit interior streaked with grime and bloodstains from previous occupants. We stepped inside, and the heavy doors sealed shut behind us with a resonant clang.
The lift descended into the depths, the air growing thicker with each passing moment, a blend of sweat, oil, and desperation permeating every breath. It seemed to go on and on. The map on Casia’s device had not shown the true scale of the place.
Solarin steadied herself, eyes fixed firmly ahead, determined but visibly shaken. "Remember," she warned quietly, as the lift shuddered to a halt. "This place doesn't care who you are or where you came from. It only respects strength."
The doors hissed open, unveiling a sprawling underground arena beneath a dome of flickering, jury-rigged floodlights. The roar of the crowd hit us like a physical blow, a chaotic blend of cheers, jeers, and primal bloodlust. I stepped forward, the golden trim of my Adamantine black armor gleaming defiantly under harsh, unforgiving lights.
"Then they'll soon learn to respect me," I promised darkly, anticipation surging through my veins as the Crucible embraced me. “Then they will learn what it is to fear.”
Comments
KingOrgasmusTwo
Time to crush some cyber … punks 🤝
Mesa
Normal human vs special humans!
Labib
TOURNAMENT!! Let’s goooo!!
