[Countdown: 88 hours 59 minutes 59 seconds.]
Standing covered in elephant blood, having been gone for nearly a full day and then suddenly returning with super strength… yeah, fair enough, Damon had some explaining to do. He was finally starting to see how what the System had said about self-reflection actually had some real meaning. But… how did you explain something so deeply personal?
It was a tall order, but Damon knew he was gonna have to do a better job than the System at the very least, in order for everyone to have a shot at surviving out there, once the Shuffle ended.
Damon flexed his bloodied hands and thought over what to tell them. If this is what’s at stake, then there’s no time to waste. Full disclosure.
But where to start?
He could feel the pressure mounting, a pressure Damon was not used to with everyone suddenly turning to him for answers, including Tyler and his new boss Tom, together with Sarah, Abi, Ken, Sam and a dozen others.
Did he know any of them well enough to frame it in terms they’d understand, straight away? Damon searched all their expecting faces, hoping for inspiration to strike. He looked them over for several long minutes, ignoring the probing questions, and then he finally let go of the stretchy trunk and raised a finger to speak—only to lose his thread of thought. This isn’t the dojang. Damn it. I know how to talk to kids, but proper adults like these people? Do I know them well enough? No, I probably don’t. Tyler possibly, but it was hard to imagine there being a Car Collector’s Dao or whatever, considering how the System just robbed every single vehicle of its battery power… Damon needed to keep it realistic. Nobody was about to burst into powers of their own if he just said the correct words. Instead, keep it basic. He’d explain his own visions and the final epiphany, then the rest would simply be up to each person to figure out for themselves, including whatever this ‘Dao Vein’ was. The process was likely to be far too personal. So, Damon started in the only place he could, by recollecting his own journey. "Alright, enough. I’ll explain, just settle down. Okay. You guys know Dragon ball, right?"
His words got met with immediate groans, even cries of outrage and protest. Even Kenpachi looked at Damon with utter disappointment. "Hey, wait? Not like that. Oh, come on! Ken, not you too? I'm just saying that's how it all started out—no one was buying it—Come on, I’m not claiming that’s what it’s really like, not really. Just settle down, you‘re not about to fuse, damn it, let me explain…"
It took a few hours, but Damon eventually got through how his own revelation had come about, finding it was now surprisingly easy to recall the details of the dreamlike visions.
Sacrifice. Which was clearly not the only meaning that could be garnered from his three examples, rather it was simply Damon's impression of the events, the part of all three visions which had inspired his actions yesterday. Somebody else might ponder the same sort of visions he’d seen, only to walk away with insights into a completely different Dao Vein of their own—whatever that was—one based on physical prowess perhaps, yet also taken from those same events. I remember I almost went a different way with it, at first.
But this was Damon's perspective, and so it had been ever since childhood. When he relived those memories in the visions, his actions the previous day had suddenly made much more sense, and so he shared it all willingly, despite the personal nature of the details. Except he glossed over Ken’s part in it all, and replaced that with the story of his and Tyler’s experiment. Smooth.
Nobody achieved their own Dao that night. That was alright, most of the group still got the best sleep they’d had since all this began, probably due to the sheer relief of finally starting to figure things out.
Unfortunately, there are swings and there are roundabouts.
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Jiro Kenpachi was on patrol, trying to make sure they always had someone awake to keep watch, without stressing everyone out by implying they were in constant danger. That kind of situation required training, and hope. For now, forcing that level of vigilance would worsen their rest, past the point where they ever reached a balance. Rather they would start to slowly deteriorate, then grow frayed.
So, he took it upon himself. I remain in the better shape anyways, despite my age. These ones are too used to constant meals.
Starving and preparing your body to last on the minimum was largely a mental endeavor.
Still, Ken needed his sleep too. Especially after that alarming pain in his chest, which suddenly disappeared on its own. He’d been tired since, and he clearly wasn’t alone. Ken had caught the others sneaking off and falling asleep in all sorts of nooks and crannies, despite warning everyone how it was safer to all sleep together, where someone could more easily check on them.
Most listened.
As the clock struck four in the morning Ken finally decided he was losing focus; it was past the time to tap out. Thankfully young Damon was back from resting and could take over, Ken would just need to go over to Tyler's office where the two had been busy planning until they passed out.
Somebody trained the boy well, judging by his form.
The young martial artist was the most reliable out of the team members, certainly in regards to physical prowess. Although it was hard to fathom what he had done to his hands, with the help of this mechanic Tyler. I was aware his generation had a certain esteem for body modifications, but there is still such a thing as taking it too far. And to hardly appear traumatized, a strong Face alone does not account for how the two of them appear to be planning for more already. The boy must have achieved a truly high level Mushin.
Ken walked a lap around the building, while aiding his posture with both hands tucked behind his back.
Perhaps I simply regret I did not think of it first—such legends exist, after all. Ken had been eyeing the Beralumin for more than a day, trying to think of a use that the System would somehow approve of, the line where allowing them to keep the material would turn acceptable, before Her patience ended and everything of worth was removed.
The best he'd come up with was to attempt to use the metal for enhancing the System wands granted to the aspiring Magicians. But when their Class turned out as useless as the others, he'd refrained. Even now he strongly suspected they would need to truly incorporate the metal into personally crafted wands—ones made from scratch, and all on their own—for the project to have a decent chance of success. No lesser craft was going to even improve their chances. And Ken had never passed the stage where it was more than an off-hand idea, having neglected to even mention it to anyone. There was no urgency to his actions, despite the need to make sure his family back home was safe. Not like what Damon supposedly felt anyway. He’d been on the verge of giving up, thinking it was impossible with having been given so little information, and only a week to work with. That was too tall a task. Hiding it inside your body instead, it is absolutely genius, and so obvious with hindsight. Although there is still no guarantee... I remain doubtful the crafting would work, even doing it the old fashioned way, with no System item for a base.
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If the System still decided the metal needed to go even now, then Damon's brave attempt would meet a gruesome end. Kenpachi had a hard time seeing the System disapproving of the experiment though, they'd gone to lengths too great to ever deny how the metal was now part of Damon’s very own being.
Walking down the dark corridor, Ken suddenly realized he'd been letting his thoughts distract him.
Something was wrong.
The vent, was the wind blowing through it strangely?
He approached carefully, not quite convinced of what he was hearing, and saw nothing. It was quite dark, only some early morning light starting to filter in, but there was nothing there, yet the sound had already grown almost imperceptibly louder.
What is it?
Ken approached the final bit and went to put his ear against the vent's bars, to hear that little bit better—that's how he caught the suddenly much closer movement, which surprised him enough to pull back. His eyes never would have caught what happened next if he didn’t back off in time for the creature to pass through the light. As the hissing thing lunged, Ken instinctively kicked upward, reflexes convinced he was parrying the deadly poke of a staff.
It was a staff with fangs, a striking serpent, at least five meters long, coming straight for his face, before his old toes cracked it in the head. His kick had been too fast to be crippling, lacking proper weight and merely stunning it for but a moment—yet a moment was enough. Ken grabbed the serpent by the head and squeezed with both hands, hard enough to expose the fangs, checking for venom. Constrictor, lucky.
The creature tried to swiftly wrap its body around Ken’s arm, but his iron grip only kept tightening and tightening, until there was a crack, and its whole body suddenly contorted uncontrollably before going completely limp.
Satisfying, good meat this, too. But, where did you come from? That's when Ken realized the slithering sound was still growing louder.
More snakes, how so many!? From where?
Ken could still hear plenty more slithering through the vents. It sounded like dozens.
He started running, and shouting.
When Ken finally rounded the corner to the sleeping quarters to see if anybody had been reacting to his voice, he was met with a sight of true horror. What looked like a hundred snakes had dropped from the vents and the roof rafters, somehow coordinating so multiple snakes landed on each person. As soon as Ken entered the room a few tried to drop on him too, from right above the door. Ken only just about stepped back in time, refusing to freeze from the sight that had met him.
"Help me, someone! In here!"
He bellowed for reinforcements with full force, to underscore the urgency, in case anybody was close enough to hear and had not yet realized the threat.
But waiting for Damon, Tyler or whoever else was not an option.
Hefting one of the System short swords that had been lying discarded on the floor, Ken immediately started laying about him with a vengeance, attempting to free the closest people. He struck nothing but heads and necks, slicing the snake’s spines clean through, even blowing out their eyes from the force. A couple in a row died from a single well-aimed cut, but it was still not nearly enough, so Ken upped the pace, every strike deliberate, aiming to perfectly strike at vitals with every cut, while fending off the ones leaning down from above. By now he was breathing heavy from the stress of imminent failure, with a whole room full of people struggling against blood loss and strangulation.
He freed them one by one, but the people he freed were hardly helping, barely able to regain their full breaths with ribs feeling crushed, and with far too many serpents still entering the room from every cranny. Even when he managed to free Hector and his brother Felipe, there was no help coming, not for that first vital minute where forty people were all wrapped up by predators who’d made it too far before being detected by their victims who'd all been found asleep due to sheer bone-deep exhaustion.
By now Kenpachi had freed six people fully, and killed more than two dozen snakes. But at least two dozen more people were still being strangled and bitten, fighting for their lives. Ken kept going, despite how three snakes had now bitten on to his legs to slow him down, and started wrapping around them in reverse.
That's when Damon finally arrived in a flurry.
His newfound super strength was still remarkable to behold, as he leapt across the room like a rocket, one who didn't know how to turn. He slapped a wall and came to a halt, then started ripping snakes off and giving them a crippling squeeze, before moving on to another and another, in quick succession.
Ken was in awe for but a second, before also continuing to add in his own efforts. He freed Sarah from the last snake she'd been struggling with, and in another few minutes everyone else was also freed and retching on the floor, desperately gasping for air.
But it was not over. More snakes were still coming out of the vents, slithering across the gridded ceiling, forcing them to defend from both the floor and the ones dropping from above
Damon was looking out of sorts. "How the hell are there this many snakes in here all of a sudden?"
Ken shared his deductions. "We must have silently docked to another island, as with the elephant earlier."
Which was a damn piece of bad luck. None of the defenses they had built was with a horde of snakes attacking in mind. Ken continued. "These must be Cuban Boas, the only serpent I have heard of who hunts in packs," He shared, shaking with effort.
Damon stared around in disbelief, over the fact that a version of this actually happened in nature.
"The System must have boosted not just their populations, but their abilities and aggression as well," Ken concluded.
They started turning the tables, getting people up and fighting back, at least. That's when Sarah finally managed to speak past her broken throat: "Tom, and Sam, they went off together earlier. Please, hurry."
The words were a broken whisper, so Kenpachi had to lean in and parse their meaning for a second. That's when he realized he'd failed to count the sleepers when he came back in.
Damon was already running.
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They found Tom and Sam embracing, as free looking as the day they were born. Being eaten.
Damon silently slayed and removed their scaled killers, and then stood back to let everyone mourn as they needed.
The two of them had been caught sleeping, neither one having had the chance to move, and so they hadn't tried, but rather shared their last moments tucked together face to face.
They all cursed the System that day.