[Welcome to Limbo!
This Game is sponsored by Dresel, Dresel, good for your teeth!
Goal: Survive 21 hours, 32 minutes, and 40 seconds.
Event A: All players are scheduled for smiting in the next 3 hours, 32 minutes, 40 seconds. For each Actgonian or Player killed, a random member on your team will be marked exempt from smiting.
Event B: Safe Zones have been activated across the map. Monsters cannot reach you in safe Zones. All players can access and use Safe Zones.]
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Humans were pack animals, their minds operated chiefly in terms of ‘us and them’, ‘in group, out group’, ‘enemies and allies’. So it was a testament to the successes of Ade’s bonding efforts that her teammates' response to someone threatening to gut her like a pig was to draw out their own weapons and prepare to kill them before they could, her.
It was a success, yes, but right now it was an inconvenience and one she should have accounted for.
Dima’s words only worsened things.
“You want to stab her, try it, see how far you get before I make headless dolls of all of you.”
“Let's see.” The man who had first threatened her replied with words like molten magma. He had dark skin like her, but was Brazilian from the accent, and had a physique that spoke of frequent visitation to the gym. It could’ve been worse, Dima still looked like he could eat him and have room for her left in his stomach.
“Wait!” Ade blurted out, eager to diffuse the situation. She felt all eyes on her and knew this would be her only moment to salvage things. If she didn’t then things would turn bloody fast, adrenaline driving steel into skin faster than any tongue could move. Even hers.
It was, all things considered, the perfect time to show off.
“I don’t think you’ve noticed, that we’re all forgetting something very important!” She stressed, feeling the smile creeping up along her lips and tossing Dima her bat. Now she was unarmed, a non-threat. Well, she’d always been the latter, whether they knew it or not. And if things went wrong Dima would be all the deadlier with a new weapon in hand.
“And what’s that?” The Brazilian asked, weighing her with uncertain eyes, as if she were some blurred photo to be scrutinised for coherence.
“Well, to introduce ourselves silly.” Ade scoffed as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.The man opened his mouth to speak but she didn’t let him, moving onwards and hopefully running over whatever walls he was about to form between them. “I’m Ade, it's a pleasure to meet you!” She held out her hand.
He stared at it as if it were a sock covered in cum.
Someone else took it however, and Ade looked up to see a woman shaking her hand, the only woman in the other group. “I’m Celia.” She said softly, with a vaguely European accent and a smile along her lips.
“Oh, that’s a lovely name, where are you from?” Ade asked with her sweetest smile, latching onto the opportunity now that it had revealed itself.
“Switzerland.” She replied.
“Oh, what a coincidence, I know a man from Switzerland.” Ade beamed.
“Oh.” Celia grinned back, tension fading a shade at the revelation.
Ade of course left out the fact that said man had only become a Swiss citizen through naturalisation, and that she had never known him personally, as well as the detail that he had died in 1955 and most importantly that his name was Albert Einstein. Such things were insignificant, and they got in the way of precious bonding time.
“The big one is Dima,” Ade began, pointing at him, “She’s Basma, and the one who looks like his face is a statue is Chaghatai.”
Dima grunted, Basma nodded politely and Chaghatai simply observed. The bastard, it was like he was going out his way to give Ade as little as possible to figure him out with.
She ignored that pesky problem for now and turned her mind back to the present. “Our fifth member- is- was Phillip.” She finished, throat tight, she didn’t have to feign the remorse in her voice at the mention of the man, it made her feel less terrible for using his death to soften the new group’s hearts up.
Like most things she did, however, it worked, Celia and the Brazilian didn’t quite meet their eyes at the revelation. Ade pressed on, aiming to kill two birds with one stone. “He died to the Minotaur,” She continued. “His sacrifice helped us kill it.”
It was a roundabout way of letting them know her group was capable, more capable than them in fact and would be to their benefit to team up with. The other group were four, not five, and they only had knives on them, that meant the Actagonian had likely killed one of their own too and they hadn’t managed to kill it back.
There was a silence and a look of consideration along all of their eyes, and then the Brazilian brought it all to a close. “Benicio.” He introduced himself, with an outstretched hand and a healthy level of distrust in his eyes.
Dima took it before Ade could, shaking the man’s arm so vigorously she thought he might snap it off. Benicio, to his credit, met the shake with a firm grip.
Ade let the two bodybuilders bond while her eyes scanned the rest of the group.
Her eyes fell on an older looking man, in his forties from the looks of it. He had brown skin and curiously enough… Kinky Blonde hair. He caught Ade gazing at him and introduced himself. “The name’s Stanley, in case you were wondering.”
“Ah, sorry for staring, where are you from Stanley?” Ade asked.
“Solomon Islands.” He answered.
“What the fuck is a Solomon Island?” Dima called out incredulously from behind her.
Ade sighed. “It’s located at the south-western Pacific, it’s essentially two parallel Islan-”
“Already tired of listening.” Dima interrupted, laughing and continuing his conversation with the Brazilian.
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Ade didn’t stab him in the asshole, because she was a nice person and that was not what nice people did.
“Your friend is a real piece of work.” Stanley shook his head like a disapproving father.
“Not my friend.” Ade clarified quickly and eagerly.
Stanley shrugged and then his eyes fell on the man to his side. He was young, in his twenties, about her age actually, with brown skin and dark curly hair. Of all four he looked like the one who had taken the events of the past few hours the worst. There were no injuries on him but his eyes were to the ground, clearly reliving things that Ade wouldn’t wish a person to experience even once.
“That’s Taksh.” Stanley said softly, eyes dark. “He’s uh, he’s not taking all of this well.”
Ade chewed on her lip, wincing. “I can’t blame him.” She remarked, voice low. “May I?” She asked finally, gesturing to the Safe Zone.
Stanley gave a look to Celia and she nodded. “You may,” she said only after a moment of contemplation flitted past her eyes. It seemed she was the one in control here.
With that, Ade and the rest of her team stepped into the Safe Zone. “I feel safer already.”She grinned.
“Yes, well I don’t.” Celia sighed. “We have three and a half hours left and we’re all scheduled for Smiting.”
Her words brought the tension wafting into the conversation again like some putrid odour. Each team knew that killing the other was a potential solution to the Smiting issue, and both were more familiar with their own members than the others’.
“I can help with that actually.” Ade interjected quickly, keeping her voice calm, smooth and composed.
“How?” Celia asked, tone pitched upwards with scepticism.
“We bring the fight to us.” Ade proposed.
“What do you mean?” Celia urged, scepticism more present if anything now and yet she could see her interest grow.
“Add our numbers up, together we are eight, each group starts out at five maximum, most probably lose a member to their Actgonian, that makes four, together, if we encounter a group that size, we’ll be able to take them out easy.” Ade explained, careful with her wordings, careful not to say they’d be killing other people.
People tended to get queasy with such discussions and she didn’t have the time to work others through their conflictions. She barely had the time to deal with her own.
She looked around to see considering eyes in Celia’s team, they were all fiddling with the idea, exploring avenues she had long since dismissed upon being faced with that bloody screen. She didn’t want to kill, but the alternative was facing another Actagonian. There was no other way. If she was wrong and she found out later, Ade knew the guilt would eat her alive. But there wasn’t any reasonable alternative to murder that she could think of right now and if she couldn’t then she doubted anyone else could.
“Alright.” Celia breathed, eyes filled with conviction. “How do we do this, do we just wait to be attacked?” She asked. “Or do we have to head out and look for a fight?” Ade could tell the Swiss woman preferred the former idea, of course she did, it was the one that meant she’d enjoy the comfort of the Safe Zone.
“Both.” Ade replied and watched her face fall at the answer. “You, I and Basma head out to lure attackers here, as a lone trio of women, we come across as easy pickings to other teams which would doubtless be considering taking out other Players to get an exemption”
“And what happens when they chase us?” Basma asked, incredulous.
“We run, silly.” Ade rolled her eyes. “Pay attention Basma.”
The woman only glared.
“And the others?” Celia asked, clearly finding some weight to the idea.
Ade shrugged. “The men stay here, together they’re five, so even if they were to meet the max team size- which is improbable- they would be evenly matched in numbers. The chances of it being an all male team are low, the chances of two among it being bodybuilders are lower, so advantage them. That’s not even mentioning our higher quality weapons.”
Celia raised a finger to her lips contemplatively and it took a long moment of silence before she finally spoke. “Shit, you’re right.”
“Yes, you'll come to see that is kind of my thing.” Ade grinned. She could only hope the others didn’t recognise how hollow it was.
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[Welcome to Limbo!
This Game is sponsored by Dresel, Dresel, good for your teeth!
Goal: Survive 19 hours, 10 minutes, and 53 seconds.
Event A: All players are scheduled for smiting in the next 1 hour, 10 minutes, 53 seconds. For each Actgonian or Player killed, a random member on your team will be marked exempt from smiting.
Event B: Safe Zones have been activated across the map. Monsters cannot reach you in safe Zones. All players can access and use Safe Zones.]
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Ade was wrong, phenomenally wrong. They had been searching for hours and hadn’t come across a single Player to lure over. She didn’t know if it was just bad, bad luck or bad planning and in truth that was what needled her the most.
The people they had seen were dead, some opened up with crude, clumsy cuts, and others simply torn open entirely like ragdolls. Victims of Players and Minotaurs respectively, she guessed.
Her group had come across a few other living people, but none of them seemed eager to chase them down, most actually fled at the sight of the three, far too terrified of death themselves to risk coming for them.
They had considered turning back and heading for the Safe Zone, but Ade had advised them against it. Her Plan A had been for the men back at the Safe Zone to have gathered up some kills and the fact that they hadn’t likely meant one of two things, either they had just as bad luck as them at finding anyone, or they all got killed in one fell swoop. Neither would be helped by the three returning, and the latter would be unacceptably dangerous.
She could feel the walls closing in on her already, each second limiting her options. It was suffocating, a crushing vice around her mind that persisted no matter how she moved. Ade knew what she had to do if she was going to survive, she had to kill Celia.
It had been her plan all along, well, her Plan C really. She intentionally made sure the woman was outnumbered and that Basma, the member of her team who was already marked exempt, was the one who followed her out.
If her teammates were already dead then she was guaranteed to be the one to get the exemption when she killed Celia, if they weren’t, however, then it was only a matter of time before both teams back at the Safe Zone started turning on one another, either Ade and Basma or Celia would receive a notification of someone’s exemption, a clear indicator that things were going south.
She had to act quick before that happened. If they were alive, the fact that it hadn't happened yet was a miracle in itself.
Ade set her eyes on her target, Celia was walking ahead of her with Basma by her side, eyes forward and scanning the terrain eagerly for another Player. There was a nervousness to the woman, a jumpiness to her gait, she wasn’t desperate yet, hadn’t figured out how hopeless it was all becoming, and when she did she’d come straight for Ade or Basma with that blade. All in all Ade wouldn’t get a better opportunity to strike than this.
She reached into her pocket and wrapped her digits around the handle of the blade. All she needed to do was walk up behind Celia and bury it in her neck. Nothing fancy, nothing athletic, just effective. it would work… So why wasn’t she doing it? Why was her blade still in her pocket?
Shit, shit, shit, Ade, you can do this, you can fucking do this because if you don’t you’ll die, do you hear me, you’ll fucking die. Ade didn’t want to die, it was an animalistic, base impulse how much she wanted to avoid dying, but she was as subject to it as a falling rock was to gravity.
She’d regret it, she knew, she’d hate herself for it, but it’d just be one of many things to add to the ever growing list. Right now it was a thing that had to be done. Ade tightened her grip around her blade, strengthened her resolve and stepped forwards. She stopped in her tracks the moment a screen flashed in front of Celia’s face.
Ade could just about read it from over the woman’s shoulder and it made her blood run cold with terror at the implication.
[Celia Bodmer has been marked exempt from Smiting.]