Dungeons were becoming Jack’s new favorite thing. Not for any reason in particular, he just liked them. Though, the big, ominous, and obviously out of place rock was a definite selling point.
He had encountered it, and a few others like it, during his climb. Between that and the MRI rooms, which looked nothing like he’d ever seen on Earth before, he was certain that they were brought here along with the monsters.
This particular rock, the largest one in the hospital, looked like a mural. Fitting, since he had found it in the chapel. It depicted four individuals, three above and one below. The three above were smiling, toasting goblets of that ominous light to each other. The one on the left was an elf with four eyes and obnoxiously long ears. Jack ogled her breasts for a while before moving on to the third member, an orc or ogre looking beast of a man, with fur around his shoulders. Jack also ogled his chest, but for different reasons. Between the elf and the ogre, Jack would go so far to say the ogre was more attractive by human standards.
The second member had their face hidden behind the raised goblets, but unlike the simple clothes of the other two, it wore armor. Not plate armor, but space marine armor like something out of a sci-fi story.
Rested between the three of them, collecting the spilled liquid from their goblets, a funnel led down to the fourth person, though their features were indistinguishable. The stone was broken at the bottom, crumbled as if the liquid itself had corroded the stone. Still, distinguishing features like arms, legs, and a screaming mouth were present enough that Jack could tell the fourth person was there, poised to swallow the dripping liquid from above. The fourth member glowed red on all parts of their body.
Jack left it, deciding to check out the advanced tech room where he had slain the mechanical golem. Now, Jack was smart, but he wasn’t that smart. He hadn’t gone to college or university since he still didn’t know what he wanted to do. Instead, he had jumped from job to job, trying to find inspiration while collecting money he didn’t spend.
Between him and his older sister, despite the fact that she was a vet, Jack was the one with the most money. Jack’s sister said it was because he was a man, and didn’t need to buy makeup.
He didn’t believe her, but he didn’t argue either.
Like the rest of the hospital, the MRI room was much larger than what it was supposed to be. An empty chest sat in the middle of the room. Apparently the giant mech golem counted as a miniboss and dropped a chest instead of the regular loot. Jack had used the futuristic sword it dropped for a while, but it was really dull, even if it was kind of durable. He favored his fists for a lot of the later fights, since weapons weren’t very common drops in the hospital.
The walls were blank, with tons of lights, monitors, switches, and whirring doodads that had been broken during the fight. Jack couldn’t make sense of it, but now that he had time to appreciate it, he could see some markings around the various interactable components. Button and switch labels, paragraphs of vertical text like the Japanese write. The language wasn’t Japanese, but the structure looked similar. Altogether, Jack wasn’t sure what language it was, but it certainly wasn’t something from earth.
Jack noticed a loose panel and gave it a tug.It broke off easily, granting him a look at the internals.
He saw regular hospital colors behind it.
Jack left the room for long enough to find a lever (another crutch) so he could attempt to pry open the thing a bit further. No such luck. He shoved his hand through instead. Bare wire scratched his fingers, a familiar feeling from his time doing electrical work. Jack dragged the wires into view.
They still had colored insulation like he was used to, but the wires themselves were a golden bronze color. His shuffling of the wires had poked the wire barely out of its insulation, but otherwise it looked clean shorn. Like someone had deliberately cut the wires. Jack reached in, pulling out as many wires as he could, all cut.
Interesting.
Besides taking note of it, he left the mystery be to go look at the other mysterious places within the hospital.
Over his adventures of looking at stones and fancy mechanical rooms, Jack noticed a pattern emerging. For one, the stone were written in one of two languages, and when there were artistic carvings, he could notice two distinct styles, though he couldn’t articulate the difference. The mechanical rooms all used the same writings. Between the three distinct things, Jack felt like their sources were obvious. The three people from the mural. He’d seen similar depictions of the mural from the other stone carving civilization, so it was clear that the three of them were connected somehow.
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Then there was the fourth individual, no more coherent in the other murals. Jack had never seen any ruins or indication of something otherworldly that the fourth being could represent. Maybe the monsters? Were they responsible for the apocalypse, hence the destroyed carvings?
Again, Jack was a smart man. But not that smart. So he left the issue be.
Besides, he had work to do.
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Jack wandered around the mall, one of two in the city. By some unlucky miracle, this one wasn’t a dungeon, which was really unfortunate now that Jack felt confident in his abilities. Still, there were a few ratkin wandering around. Like the goblins in the parking lot, these ratkins had laid claim to the mall as their own fortress. Jack cleared them out by way of strategic hiding places and liberal use of his taunting shout.
He had NO idea how he acquired the taunt, or if he’d always had it, but he certainly enjoyed using it. His intuition thought that it had something to do with the golden text box, but he had no idea what that meant in the grand scheme of things.
He decided not to think about it and just continue his stroll through the mall.
Backpacks were the goal of this hunt. And maybe some maps of the city, but he had no idea where he could find those. With a sudden influx of health potions from the hospital (among other mysterious potions), Jack had an idea to create caches throughout the city. It wouldn’t be an easy task, and it’d certainly take a long time to do. For each cache, he wanted to essentially create his own dungeon, or else modify an existing one with as many traps as possible. Theoretically, if he wrote instructions on how to bypass the dungeons in English, he could possibly help other survivors of the apocalypse. If there were any.
Jack paused by the food court. A human corpse laid with its throat cut. He wore armor made of wood, and carried a spear of rebar and a shield of dented aluminum. His backpack was torn open, ravaged by ratkin claws. Further along, Jack found a second body in a similar position. They were fresh, probably less than a few hours old. Judging by their positions, they were running in the same direction.
Jack followed it, finding a store with the shutters down. It was dented, metal broken in places. Hundreds of ratkin paw prints painted in red blood led from the largest hole towards where Jack had just slaughtered them.
He slammed his shield against the shutters, attempting to startle any occupants. He didn’t hear anything.
The inside of the store had evidence of being maintained, particularly by humans. It also had half a dozen bodies littered in the back, with their stomachs torn out and chewed on. Jack looked around a bit longer, snagging some empty bags he found on his way out.
He didn’t want to be around when the bodies started smelling any more than they already did.
Humans didn’t normally see dead bodies. Even the internet, vast and horrifying though it was, was generally very censored on mainstream sites. Jack didn’t have a frame of reference for how he was supposed to react to seeing dead humans. Were there rules to it? Obviously he recognized that it varied from person to person, but what was the criteria?
Soldiers were used to bodies. Mostly. Jack didn’t know for sure, since most reactions he’d seen were from movies, and at that, the bodies were normally off screen. Jack felt compelled to copy their mannerisms, but he couldn’t muster up the reason to go through with it. There was nobody around to see his act. He was free.
He paused next to a mannequin. He’d never been allowed to touch one before, and he was curious. He lifted it off the pole in the heel, careful to keep it intact. Thankfully, it was one of those ones with articulating wrists and stuff, to make more dynamic poses. Jack groped its chest, mildly surprised to find that it was wearing a bra. He would have thought that since it was plastic that it wouldn’t require support, but maybe this was just a part of the realism. It even had nipples! No butt crack though, disappointingly.
Jack put it back. He felt like he had to respect it somehow, after just violating it out of the blue. After taking a few steps away from it, he realized that was entirely stupid, as it was an inanimate object.
Or was it?
Jack swung his weapon at its skull, obliterating it. You know, just in case.
His journey took him around all sorts of places. Since he was in the clothing section, he decided to replace his armor. But, since it was also safe, at least for now, Jack decided he’d have a little bit of fun.
He tried on some baggy clothes, just to see how they felt. They didn’t suit him. Tight shirts suited him though, so he took a few minutes to flex in front of the changing room mirrors. He even tried some tight sweatpants to accentuate his ass.
Lookin’ good.
He even tried on some girls' clothes. For the most part, they just looked the same as if he was wearing guys’ clothes a few sizes too small. Why were their sizes so different? Male medium was like female extra large. And Jack really disliked the armpits. Why did they ride up on his underarms!? They pulled at the hair under there so uncomfortably. If he wore them any longer, he was sure his armpits would bald eventually.
He looked good in dresses too. Goofy, obviously, but good.
Jack debated wearing a skirt over his regular armor, but decided against it. Despite having spent a few hours changing out in the open, he didn’t want to look crazy.
He settled for wearing a bra. It stashed small items of interest so easily!
The bags he’d collected were stuffed full of items. Extra armor. Clothes for winter. Tools like utensils, knives, can openers, and whatever else Jack deemed useful in the future. No food, because he didn’t want to attract the animal-like monsters.
The first bag was stashed in one of the unlocked cars in the hospital parking lot, along with some potions from the hospital itself. One down, many more to go.