Everitime Elvanera, chairwoman of Elvanera Group, had been trying to be more positive about things of late. That said, however, she couldn’t help but crack a frown as she eyed the closed folder sitting on her desk. Contained within its manilla confines were the latest reports of the things happening in Elvanera Group—both on the namesake island and abroad.
With how things were going as of late, Everitime didn’t care much for the idea of opening it.
She already had enough shit going on in her personal life right now as it was.
Between dealing with her daughter, who refused to inherit Elvanera Group because of the ‘unethical practices inherent to the nature of the organization’ and her son, who had run off a few weeks ago without telling anyone to ‘teach impoverished communities high yield yet nonetheless sustainable farming practices,’ Everitime Elvanera had a lot on her plate.
She respected her children for doing what they believed in, but damn was it annoying.
The worst part was that her husband just said ‘they need to find themselves’ whenever she suggested doing something about it. The only silver lining was that both of their kids—especially Alwayz, their daughter—were powerful for people their ages, so safety wasn’t a big concern, but even THAT was a problem, apparently. They had gotten strong because of the high-intensity leveling program she’d put them through, but apparently, that had been ‘child abuse’ and ‘the ends didn’t justify the means’.
Speaking of problems, there was also the ongoing issue with Weathermaker. The whole, ‘you need to sacrifice a few hundred people to me a year or else I’ll bring pestilence and decay to the Kingmaker Plains’ thing was never very fun to deal with, but it was especially annoying at the present moment.
Everitime sighed.
he debacle with the ‘Undead Rain’ had come as an unwelcome surprise a few weeks before.
Weathermaker had been dissatisfied with the most recent batch of sacrifices, finding them ‘not tortured enough’ and so he had decided to make the inhabitants of Neighborhood 8 play a ‘penalty game’ of sorts—one that would almost certainly result in the death of everyone who had been living there.
The whole ‘it’s an experiment’ excuse she’d used to justify it to everyone else had admittedly been a pretty shitty one, but oh well. Weathermaker didn’t want anyone besides her and a few others to know their true nature, so lies like that were occasionally necessary. It had been that way for centuries.
In any case, finding a few thousand new slaves to replace the dead ones would be one hell of a chore.
Everitime pressed her face down against her desk, wondering for a moment if maybe she could just find some random goober to take over Elvanera Group so that she could retire but, of course, it wasn’t that simple. Not just anyone could run a world-class farming/human sacrifice organization.
“Bleh.” She picked up a coffee pot that had been sitting on her desk and poured some of the beverage into her ‘#1 Gardening Enthusiast’ mug. “At least that Siempre guy will probably die… Maybe…”
♦
Midday took in a slow breath of stagnant, vaguely sour-tasting air. It was strange, he thought, that the air tasted sour to him, seeing as the tongue jelly had more-or-less stolen that sense from him.
Maybe it was a sign that he was recovering but, then again, probably not. He had no faith in his luck.
With a sigh, he looked down at the regenerating carcass of the zombie tadpole he’d just stomped to death. Midday had never considered himself squeamish—his life even before getting shipped off to Elvanera Island had never allowed for such luxuries—but that didn’t mean he wasn’t disgusted by the task at hand: Killing a zombie tadpole that came back to life no matter how many times he killed it, all the while becoming more gruesome and dangerous after each death, was not his idea of fun.
As always, the rain was coming down hard.
There were never any fluctuations in the weight of the downpour. The monotony was a blessing and a curse, for on one hand it was a constant discomfort, ever-present at the back of his mind. On the other, however, its monotonous consistency was what made it so easy to get used to as the new status quo.
He supposed that he also had the Raincoat Ring to thank for making his life a little less miserable, its power reflecting much of the water that landed on him. Still, the ring wasn’t much solace against the drabness of the god or the thick mud encroaching up his legs, encasing them in a tomb of grime.
He let out a sigh. No doubt about it, thought Midday, this place was hell.
His only saving grace was that the other members of the Solomon Bodyguard Team were all more competent than he, but even that was a problem in of itself: He knew that he was essentially seen as deadweight, and the feeling of being disposable at the earliest convenience was unpleasant.
“Looks like you’re my only friend here, Mister Potatoes.”
The giant beetle on his shoulder, of course, did not respond.
“You and the Elvanerean Ring, I guess.”
Mister Potatoes remained silent.
“You know, I hear the Valley Algae is a good food source.”
He watched idly as the zombie tadpole reformed itself. This was the sixth time he had killed the creature and by now it had swelled up from its original size of one inch to a comparatively enormous two feet; its body had adapted to the land as well, taking on a wormlike appearance as its previously fragile, slimy membrane was replaced with hide thick and calloused to the point of unwieldiness.
“Bet something good would happen if I mix the algae with Devil Peppercorn,” he said, thinking out loud.
The beetle launched its Tongue Jelly-infused tongue out of its mouth as though it were a frog and, in a lightning-fast motion, caught one of the several hundred gnats that were buzzing around Midday.
Midday wondered if that was okay, since it seemed possible that the bug might revive inside Mister Potatoes’ stomach and become a very serious problem for the beetle, but Mister Potatoes had been eating bugs on and off for the past fifteen minutes but had yet to show any signs of discomfort.
He reckoned there might be a clue in that. He also reckoned that the possibility of bugs—numerous as they were, dying and undergoing the mutation process—could potentially become a serious threat.
As for Mister Potatoes' continued good health, Midday guessed that maybe the resurrection process couldn’t happen inside a stomach because the rain couldn’t reach there, but he didn’t know for sure.
He was just glad his beetle hadn’t exploded.
In any case, the tadpole had fully regenerated and was slowly inching toward Midday.
He looked down at it and let out a sigh.
Having done this so many times by now, Midday had a decent grasp on how the revival mechanism worked, and he was pretty sure that the tadpole would never become a threat to him. It might become impossible to for him kill, sure, but being good at survival and being dangerous were not the same.
Insofar as he could tell, the undead rain was not intelligent. It simply took whatever caused any given creature’s demise and made it more resistant to that specific thing.
When the tadpole died from the blunt force trauma of a stomp, it adapted thicker skin to withstand blunt force better, and so on. As such, over the past few deaths, the tadpole had become very resistant to getting crushed to death, but that was it. It had gotten bigger, its skin had toughened, and its innards had softened such that it could now be squished like a pillow only to later regain its normal shape, but the creature still moved about with the agility one would expect from a fish out of water.
Moreover, while the first few resurrections had resulted in incredible transformations—with the tadpole’s size doubling after every death—things were slowing down now. The transformative aspect of the undead rain was most potent for the first few resurrections, though the actual resurrections themselves remained constant: the tadpole always took 10 seconds to bring itself back to life.
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The knowledge that things stabilized after the first few deaths and that the resurrection process only changed the creature to be more resilient against what had killed it represented a weakness to be exploited in Midday’s eyes. If a creature was killed via, say, suffocation 10 times, it might gain adaptations like extra noses or other things like that, but it probably wouldn’t grow in size or get stronger in the conventional sense. Moreover, since that creature would have used up most of its potential for adaptation in its first few deaths, it would be unable to adapt to new, novel causes of death—like gunfire or blunt force, for instance.
Still, that method didn’t strike him as practical. Killing an already dangerous creature several times would, of course, be dangerous—not to mention time-consuming and energy-intensive.
Middy let out a sigh.
Theorizing aside, he was sure now that the tadpole posed no threat.
Sure, it had ballooned to several dozen times its original size in less than an hour, but it was still just a tadpole at the end of the day. The real problem, thought Midday, would be if something that was already dangerous to begin with died several times. If that happened, he feared that a true monster would be born, but the odds of that worst-case scenario struck Midday as low. Strong things, after all, tended not to die very much, especially not after getting even harder to kill if they did get slain.
He stomped on the tadpole a few times until it was dead again.
♦
Jenjo and Bell stood at the edge of the elephant’s back, looking down into the foggy abyss below. It was impossible to see much of anything down there aside from the soft blue of the Valley Algae’s bioluminescence, but Jenjo wasn’t worried.
“So, Mister Jenjo,” began Bell, his tone polite. “You wished to fish?”
“In a roundabout way,” answered Jenjo, still peering over the edge. “We’ll be fishing, yeah, but not for fish. I’m not interested in finding out what kind of monster we’d get if we tried to cook a fish.”
“Then it must be the algae you want. I do believe Midday said something about it being edible.”
“You’re exactly right.” Jenjo stepped back from the pond and leaned himself against a tree. “The only question is how to go about scraping it off the water. We’re more than a hundred feet up from the waterline here, and I don’t think either of us wants to climb down and harvest it by hand.”
“Hmm. I suppose not. What about that Ablute fellow? He has water-related powers, no?”
“But he has no skill in using them, and his level isn’t high enough to brute force it.” Jenjo took a moment to scratch his chin. “I thought a fishing rod might work, but the yields would be low. I’d like to come up with something better. Any ideas?”
“I believe that a fishing rod would work, Mister Jenjo—albeit with some modifications from the conventional form. Instead of a hook, we could have a bucket at the end and, instead of a string, we could use rope. In other words, we could build something halfway between a fishing rod and a well.”
“Not bad,” said Jenjo, nodding. “That should be doable. Can I leave that task of building it to you?”
"Of course, Mister Jenjo," Bell replied with a smile. “Your talents are better used elsewhere.”
“Alright. Well, best of luck with that.” Jenjo started walking away. “In that case, I’ll go check on the shelter crew. If you need any assistance with the algae well, Midday can probably help.”
♦
Jenjo was surprised to find Ablute, Braulia, and the Carpentry Sisters were making quick progress.
Ablute, with his Currents Ability, had his hands dug into the muddy walls of the soon-to-be shelter. He was using his power to force the water inside the mud toward the exterior side of the wall, where Braulia was using her Pyromancy to evaporate it and dry the bricks into a solid form—and all of this was happening under the orders of the carpentry sisters, who had the discipline of experienced soldiers.
Seeing that things were going smoothly there, he decided not to bother them and to instead spend his time patrolling the island for any potential threats. As the only truly combat-capable member of the Solomon Bodyguard Team, he reckoned this sort of thing was really what he ought to be doing with his time. He enjoyed the power that came from his status as the leader but, after seeing how well the carpentry sisters were managing their admittedly rather subpar peers, he wondered if it might be wise to defer leadership to them so that he would have more time to patrol the edges of the elephant.
But then, just as he was beginning to think that, his plans went out the window.
A stern-faced man with a torso more than twice as long as it should have been—the supposed result of an attempt to ‘upgrade’ his spine several years ago—was standing under the shelter of a tree, though he did not need to do so, as the Umbrella Ring on his finger kept him perfectly dry regardless.
“Hello, Jenjo,” said Siempre Elvanera.
Jenjo grabbed his sword. If things went sour here, his death was likely.
“How can I help you?” said Jenjo, all the while charging up his Phantom Slice Ability.
Although Siempre was much higher level than him, Jenjo felt that he could slay the man if he played his cards right. He knew that the overseer was above level thirty and that he therefore possessed three Abilities—of which Jenjo only knew Mutagen, the power that had earned him his title as an Elvanerean, and Marionette, which allowed him to turn corpses into his puppets. As for the third power, Jenjo had no clue, but he had never heard anything about Siempre being especially formidable as a fighter.
Jenjo puts the odds of him successfully killing his former boss at 50/50. He liked those odds.
“Shelter, Jenjo. I’m looking for it. This place will be suitable for me.”
“Leave.” Jenjo’s phantom slice was somewhat charged by now. It still wasn’t enough to kill a man like Siempre—not unless he was at point-blank range—but it made for a good deterrent all the same.
“I’d rather not draw your ire,” said Siempre, his face devoid of emotion. “I have no reason to be your enemy. If I did, do you believe we would be having this conversation? No, Jenjo. We wouldn’t. The only person hunting you right now is Coffee Coffee. What I want is a frog called Solomon. Are you familiar?”
“I’m not.”
“Ah. I see. Since you were head guard for quite some time there and are currently on the back of an Old Growth Elephant—the same kind of elephant Solomon is known to live atop—I thought you might know something, but I suppose that was fallacious cognition on my part.” He took a step back, increasing the distance between himself and Jenjo’s cutlass. “I suppose I can’t order you to tell me the truth, seeing as you don’t work for me anymore, but worry not. At present, I am not feeling especially loyal to the chairwoman. If you stand in my way, doing her the favor of killing that frog is not worth the trouble.”
“Why are you even here in the first place?” Jenjo asked, more than happy to stall. The longer he kept his hands in position, the more powerful his phantom slash would become. “Isn’t your main job to create posthumans? I have a hard time believing that Everitime would allow production to stop just so that you, a non-combatant, could come here and use your valuable time to kill a frog, of all things.”
“You must remember that things in life can oftentimes be complicated, Jenjo. I see no reason to give a precise answer. Not yet, I suppose. If you agree to ally with me, I will elucidate you on such matters.”
“Fuck off. You sentenced me to death and want to be friends?”
“Everitime sentenced you to death, on Weathermaker’s request. Not me. I only wrote the letter setting that into motion. But I digress. We should work together. If you are unaffiliated with Solomon the Frog, I see no reason for us to have animosity toward one another.”
“Weathermaker…” Jenjo faltered for a moment. “Weathermaker requested my death?”
“Indirectly, but, yes, I believe that to be the case. You haven’t been at the plantation long enough to experience this firsthand, but these unjustifiably expensive death games happen every so often.” He paused. “But Everitime, while eccentric, is not so foolish as to kill off her workers for entertainment.”
“But you are,” noted Jenjo. “You came up with the Wheel of Punishment, along with several other things to make the lives of the people here harder for no valid reason, did you not?”
“I did not. Those were all implemented on Everitime’s orders—and I suspect that those orders in turn originated from Weathermaker. If you want more information, work with me. I could turn you into a posthuman, if that interests you. Given your current strength, you would be monstrously powerful if I did so. Perhaps strong enough to force your way off this island. I would follow in your wake, of course.”
“And what are the odds I retain my humanity through that? Your method isn’t known for being safe.”
“Converting a human into a posthuman in the span of just a few days is hard on the body, regardless of the method. I will make no guarantees regarding the result of your transformation.”
“Then fuck off.”
In the eyes of the administrators, most people on Elvanera Island were as disposable, and Siempre’s methods took full advantage of that. The man would simply get a batch of a hundred or so different people and use his Mutagen power on them—which was almost completely random in its effects.
Most people died from that method—with the corpses of ‘failed specimens’ ending up as puppets for Siempre—but the rare few who survived the ‘mutation lottery’, as he had once heard it described, were almost always so far removed from their original forms and mentalities that it was impossible to know they had ever been human without prior knowledge of their condition.
As far as posthuman creation methods went, Siempre’s was by far the fastest, and by far the worst. The whole point of Elvanera Group’s posthumans was that they were the cheapest, most mass-producible ones on the market, and Jenjo had no interest in becoming one of them.
Siempre remained neutral about the rejection. "Very well. I won't push the issue any further. If you change your mind on the alliance or otherwise, however, find me. I trust that you will be able to.” He turned around. “I’ll be leaving now but, first, I leave you with an offer: if you should just so happen to find Solomon and bring him to me, I will do everything in my power to ensure you are rewarded handsomely for the assistance. That is all.”
With a great leap, Siempre flung himself off Jugrim, landing unseen elsewhere far below.
Jenjo didn't let his guard down until he was sure Siempre was long gone. By the time he finally chose to release Phantom Slice, his arms felt like they were going to explode—and indeed they would have if he had kept charging it for another minute. Phantom Slice, while powerful, put a huge strain on the body.
Resting his arms at his sides, he started thinking about Siempre’s offer.
He had no intent of accepting it, knowing full well that Siempre could not be trusted, but he all the while wondered what Siempre’s intention had been in approaching so directly.
It seemed highly unlikely that Siempre would have expected Jenjo to simply accept his offer without a moment's thought. The man was far too intelligent for such a miscalculation. Perhaps it had been a test, a way to see just how desperate Jenjo was or where his loyalties truly lied. Or maybe it had been an attempt at psychological warfare, and Siempre had been trying to throw him off his game.
Whatever the case, it didn’t matter. He had been expecting an encounter with Siempre. Not this soon, of course—the speed at which the man had arrived was absurd—but he had planned for the man to show up at some point. At which time, his intention had been to duel Siempre to the death, but he had made the mistake of using his Dueling Room Opus a few days ago, and the cooldown lasted a week. Until he regained access to that power, he didn’t want to risk fighting Siempre outright.
It was going to be a long month, thought Jenjo. He started walking back to the others.