Archimedes
“You realize we’re in a competition, right?” Nguyen grumbled as she stared in exasperation at Archimedes and Chedderfield, who were both willingly taking damage from the hell-cursed fog debuff.
“I’m almost at 3 points,” Chedderfield said with gritted teeth, sweat beading on his forehead. After Archimedes had figured out how to cheese the system, so to speak, he had talked Chedderfield into switching his class to the warden as well and walking back into the fog to grab the debuff.
“Sweetie, my Par’Mach’kai, you really, really don’t have to do this. We’re pressed for time,” said Danielle, who was holding Chedderifeld’s hand as he moaned out in agony from the debuff.
“I’m almost there . . . Just . . . Just trust me . . . THERE!” Chedderfield shouted triumphantly. As he switched his class back to the Purgator, having gotten his three skill points, the change was visible. Archimedes could tell he switched classes because he went from sweating, looking paler than Casper with red bloodshot eyes and ragged breathing, back to his usual complexion and happy, chipper self in a single second.
“There we go. That wasn’t so hard. You get that next point yourself?” Chedderfield asked as Archimedes ate some more panther flesh to handle the increasingly grueling pain from the stacking fog’s debuff. It had started off as only a single health point every six seconds, but after only a few minutes, it was up to 20.
“Still at 3 points,” Archimedes replied, clenching his teeth as he tried to withstand the effect. “I think 3 points might be the best I can do, too,” he had to admit to himself and Chedderfield. It wasn’t just that the damage from the debuff was progressively more painful each minute that passed, to the point that now it felt like someone was impaling him with jagged spikes, but it was also that he was starting to lose focus, and every bite of flesh became more and more difficult to eat. He felt like he would throw up at any minute if he didn’t get cured soon.
“Nah, you can do this. One more set man. You can get it, bro. I got ya,” Chedderfield cheered him on, his middle finger already covered in cleansing blue flame and ready to flick Archimedes.
“Ah, the precious gym bro culture, always pushing each other to get ‘one more rep,’” Nguyen chuckled from the sideline.
“Not something you’ve ever seen in person before, is it?” Lucy taunted as she pinched her bicep.
“Like a comedian without emotional baggage?” Nguyen shot back.
“Ugh, I don’t think I can, man,” Archimedes whined as he gritted his teeth and suffered another tick of damage. This one was for 25 damage, worse than the one before. It felt like someone flayed his entire back off to the top of his head in one quick motion.
“Six more seconds, Arc. Better eat fast,” Chedderfield said with a smile that showed he was enjoying Archimedes’ suffering far more than Archimedes thought any person should.
He could only look up, feeling a little betrayed as he glared at his friend while biting off yet another piece of undead panther flesh. His tongue kept trying to push it out of his mouth as every ounce of willpower he had was mustered to swallow the food despite the hell-cursed debuff that induced such bad nausea that he desperately wanted to vomit.
“There. I got it. Now please, please fucking cure me,” Archimedes practically begged as he managed to finally swallow the meat.
“Sure thing. I knew we could do it!” Chedderfield’s motivational positivity was entirely unwanted as he flicked Archimedes’ forehead and said, “Baka.” Even though Archimedes was merely returning to normal, the weight of the debuffs having been lifted all at the same time made him feel like a million bucks despite the fact he was hovering with just over 55 health—or about 26% of his total HP—remaining.
“Alright, can we go now? That competition isn’t going to win itself, and I don’t want to lose to a bunch of Aussies because you two are masochists,” Lucy demanded, tapping on her wrist.
“Hey, if you didn’t like how much of a self-sacrifice-loving pain junky Archimedes was, you shouldn’t have gotten together with him,” Chedderfield said.
“It’s always pleasant to hear how you make ‘friend who helps others in need’ sound like a bad mental condition,” Nguyen noted.
“Well, it was a perk that applies to every class, to give me 1% more total constitution, with a minimum of 1 constitution. I’m not passing that up.” Chedderfield said, ignoring Nguyen’s dig at his observation.
“I put a point in that one too,” Archimedes laughed.
“And the other two free points?” Chedderfield asked. “What’d you spend those on? I grabbed the only other available perk for 1% less damage from area-of-effect attacks. ‘Cause you never know. That 1% might just save my life.”
“He probably saw a bunch of options and got cold feet on making a decision,” Lucy answered for him. It was true, but he decided to say nothing rather than corroborate her story.
“Well, how about we just focus on catching up? It’s like Nguyen said: we’re in a competition,” Archimedes said as he shifted the topic while also quickly leveling up the 1% constitution perk two more times to a +3% total constitution, even if it still wasn’t enough to get him above +1 constitution.
As Archimedes finished handling the warden class stuff, he switched back to the Automator class and looked up to see the rest of the group walking around the turnstiles at the entrance of the now-destroyed zoo, something that was easy to do now that the stucco walls funneling customers into them were destroyed.
“What are you doing?” Nguyen asked as Archimedes walked up to the two lonely turnstiles.
“I . . . just always wanted to do this,” Archimedes answered as he easily hopped over them like a kid trying to skip a subway fare in an old television show.
Lucy shook her head at Archimedes’ odd desire. “You’re ridiculous.”
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.
As he looked around after jumping over the turnstiles, he was hit again by just how much the world had changed. The food and souvenir stands that would have been surrounded by families visiting the place, preparing for a long day wandering around with kids amazed to see animals they’d only thought were in their cartoons, were now barely standing. The flamingo habitat, at least according to the bright, primary-colored sign outside the knee-high fencing in ruins to the left, was now wrecked, with a pit and a small bit of green water beside piles of pink feathers, all reminding Archimedes of just how far humanity had fallen.
“Either something came and ate them, or they all molted simultaneously,” Chedderfield commented as he walked up to Archimedes.
“There are a lot of predators in this zoo, and I don’t think anyone stuck around to feed them,” Nguyen said.
“Predators we don’t want to run into if we don’t have to,” Danielle cautioned, invoking a librarian-level “shush” with her index finger raised to her lips, silencing the whole group.
“Ye—” Chedderfield began, likely trying to just agree with her, only to have Danielle shush him even harder.
Without making a sound for fear of potentially invoking another rebuke from Librarian-Mode Danielle, Archimedes and the rest snuck past the flamingo habitat toward the center, avoiding the sounds of raging animals off toward the safari section to their left. The right path wound through a kids’ area, and if the picture map was to be believed, there was an aviary, sloths, and a petting zoo along with a kids’ train ride that likely cost more than it was worth but would occupy a kid for a few minutes and give parents a chance to sit.
“I say we go left,” Lucy said the same instant that Danielle said, “Let's go right.”
The two looked at each other, and Danielle quickly said, “Why in the world would we go towards the rhinos and lions? The kids’ area likely has smaller monsters that were in a petting zoo.”
“I say we go right,” Emma added very decisively, only for Lucy to reply quickly with an “aww, our little kid wants to go see the petting zoo,” in a teasing manner.
“She just got stabbed by a rhino. I doubt she wants to run into another,” Nguyen remarked, smacking Lucy for her insensitivity.
Lucy shook her head. “Have none of you ever seen a horror movie? It’s always the presumed kids’ area that turns into the worst hell hole.”
“This isn't a horror movie written with cheap twists and bad plot devices. It’s an actual apocalypse. Those animals are in the kids’ section for a reason,” Nguyen took her stance, “I’m voting right with the kid.”
“I mean, yeah. It’s not like anyone would put something horrifying like crocodiles in the kids’ section, right?” Emma asked.
With the majority of the group agreeing to head right, they took off in that direction, Nguyen leading, her steps silent on the colored concrete path. There were sounds of fighting off in the distance with roars of animals mixed with explosions and yells, but their path took them through what was the creepiest area that Archimedes had ever seen. To the right were two kiddy rides, one a pint-sized train that had transformed into a horror show. Instead of being made of primary-colored metal and plastic, it was made from the flesh and bones of people and animals. Small, child-sized skeletal feet conveyed it instead of electrically powered wheels, and as he got close enough, Archimedes could see that there was a stretched-out face made of patchwork skin stitched onto the front of the train like some horrible, twisted version of Thomas the Train. A pair of lidless eyes from the face looked at him before disappearing again as the thing moved through the zoo on some path. Archimedes didn’t know if some new hell creature had possessed the train or if it had somehow mutated, but he knew he sure as hell wasn’t going near the thing.
The group moved on, passing empty, broken cages where birds should have been, according to the signs. He could guess that they’d changed like everything else in the zoo and escaped until he saw the sloth habitat and petting zoo sections. The wooden buildings where the animals should have been were scenes of carnage. Blood was splashed liberally. Bits of fur and shell were everywhere like a taxidermist shop had exploded. Whatever had done all the damage had already left, and the group made good time toward where they’d seen the pit at the center of the zoo.
“Hold,” Nguyen whispered while raising a fist. The group froze, and a moment later, Nguyen dove behind a group of decaying green-and-brown palm trees. She motioned for the others to follow. Everyone found a hiding spot, and then Archimedes heard the grunts of a creature approaching.
Two big five-hundred-pound silverback gorillas marched past on the path, their normally thick black fur falling off in patches, exposing gray muscles and bone beneath. Their already elongated arms were longer with sharp bone blades extending from their forearms, and their size had increased by a magnitude. They resemble small versions of King Kong, and Archimedes kept as still as he could as he ducked down behind a bush and hoped they passed quickly.
He could hear them snort and grunt, but their sounds grew more distant. When he was sure they’d gone, he came out of hiding, and Nguyen motioned for them to follow her.
“Where are we going?” Emma asked in a whisper.
“I think there’s a way to avoid the patrols,” Nguyen answered and led them past the kids’ section to an area marked as the “Otter Zone.” There was a long stretch of artificial river that ran east to west. The river’s water was significantly lower than normal, judging from the water marks around the edges of the cement riverbed.
“I saw on the map that this was here. We can travel below eye level this way toward the pit,” Nguyen said as she climbed the fence that had been meant to keep out visitors.
The group followed, muck and grime sticking to their legs as they waded through what was left of the artificial river, the pumps that kept the water clean having broken or shut off when the electricity went down.
Archimedes could feel the rumble of something huge walking, each of its steps sending tremors through the ground and disturbing the water they stood in. It reminded him of that scene in Jurassic Park, and he had to restrain himself from saying the famous line, "Don't move! He can't see you if you don't move." But a turn of Nguyen’s head put him on alert, and a moment later, he heard an annoyed voice say, “Does he think we’re one of the humans’ factories? He keeps asking for more evolved troops, and the Pool of Evolution only has a small chance of producing already evolved creatures out of dead human bodies. That we’ve been forced to divert cores to increase those chances is a waste of resources. We should be fortifying our position. But noooo, no one listened to me.”
Archimedes peeked above the muddy lip of the lake, half expecting to see a hell-cursed brute or an evolved zombie given how similar the creature’s voice sounded to any other human’s, but instead there was a hell-cursed conscriptor standing on six spider-like legs as its clawed hands gently stroked the skinless trunk of a four-tusked elephant. The conscriptor, though not having much of a face to express anything, seemed somehow forlorn as it said, “No one listens to me except you, Peanut.”
As an explosion sounded out from the north, the eyeless hell-cursed creature turned in that direction, and it continued, “Now we have annoying, overleveled humans who refuse to evolve so they can join us in the fight against those evil extinction-pushing Graikoi. I don’t know what that new general is thinking, but I’ll have to deal with them before they reach our precious pit.”
The creature put a hand to its exposed brain, and the monster’s head took up a purple halo. Then the elephant wrapped its trunk around the conscriptor and raised it gently to its weathered gray back. The conscriptor’s spider-like legs dug into the elephant’s back to secure purchase, black blood oozing from the wounds. But the undead elephant didn’t so much as twitch, free from pain now that it was unliving.
The conscriptor’s purple halo pulsed and then blossomed out, radiating like water disturbed by a dropped pebble. Archimedes felt the released energy wash over him, and he felt something tickle the back of his head.
“Oh, we have a few rats that have slipped past the others,” the conscriptor said.
Archimedes saw the conscriptor’s head turn toward their hiding spot, the rest of its body following as the elephant pivoted toward them, now an extension of the monster perched atop it.
“Shit! It knows we’re here!” Archimedes shouted. “Attack!”