‘I wonder if I should try and hunt more Sky lurkers? They had big crystals and the announcement said the Cave Crawler crystals could be sold.’ I rub my fingers over my nonexistent beard as I think about potential get-rich-quick schemes and finish folding up my bedding and readjusting my many knives.
Mai had awoken us once her shift was over, signifying that we had had our seven hours of rest and we would be heading back into the deeper depths of the caves. ‘I could get separated from the others though, hmmm, but on the other hand, loot. What to do, what to do.’ I have been debating the dilemma since I woke up and wasn't sure of the best course of action. While I am confident in my ability to kill another Sky lurker I wasn't sure if it was worth the day long journey back to the surface when I hadn't even found any of the promised unknown resources.
‘And I would leave the others to face unknown dangers without having the option to make a safe space,’ I glance at them eating their breakfast of oat bars and fruit. Most of them haven't bothered to fold up their bedding and instead opted to just place it into their inventories so that they could eat breakfast faster and “fath around” But I preferred to save as much space in my limited inventory as possible.
“Help…” A quiet cry for help rebounds off the hardened stone walls and echoes around us in a soft whisper. Sam jumps up and faces the direction of the call, his keen senses able to pick up where the cry for assistance had come from.
“We have to help them,” Sam and Ava say at almost the same time as the others start to look toward the same direction.
“It could be a trap,” I state, putting the last of my bedding away and biting into a rock.
“And it could be someone in desperate need of our help” Sam counters, spear already in hand and breakfast packed away.
‘His inventory must be a mess, focus Jacob.’
“Help…” another cry echoes through the caves, surrounding us in its plea for assistance.
I sigh, “Alright, who else thinks we should help?” Everyone else states their desire to help and starts to quickly tidy away the rest of their belongings so we can rush to help the mysterious cries. With everything packed away in record time, we started to run into the endless maze of tunnels, following Sam towards the source of distress while Mia tried her best to map our route so we wouldn't get lost.
After about ten turns and 3 minutes of the cries getting louder, we finally reached an area that unexpectedly opened up into a wide room and was doused in a soft green light. It was a large cave with a strange glowing green moss.
The cave had the same dull grey stone with a slight brown colouring as the rest of the winding tunnels but it was easily 100m tall with large stalactites hanging from the ceiling like deformed fangs of a monster waiting to fall down and piece us under their might.
Tall stalagmites rose from the jagged floor into stone pillars that obscured most of the cave but they did allow me to see something with great potential. A green luminescent moss seemed to glow in the dark cave, giving off the soft green light and appeared to be giving off a pungent sweet smell that filled the cave.
‘A potential renewable light? Oh, and there's a very sickly looking man being attacked by two undead about 100 metres into the cave, standing within a small clearing of stalagmites.’
“Are you ok?” Yells Sam as he rushes over with the others coming over to help him.
‘Wonder if we can take the moss with us and…Why is that guy alone? He managed to get this deep but can't deal with two undead.’ I look at the situation closer and notice that there is no blood or visible wounds as the sickly 30 year old looking man pushes back one of the undead.
“Please help me!” The unnamed man calls in distress.
“Why didn't you run away? Undead are strong but slow.” I ask while slowing down and looking at my surroundings.
“I twisted my ankle,” He says after a brief pause. I look at his feet but don't see any uneven distribution of weight. “How?” I ask simply as I stop moving towards the man and put my hand on the hilt of one of my many kitchen knives.
“Will you just help me?!?!” He calls out in anger. By this point, my friends were almost at the man's location.
“And you made it this far with a twisted ankle..” I began growing more paranoid as the situation unfolded before I was interrupted by the stranger as he called out in annoyance. “Fuck it, Just kill them, and bring me their inventories!”
As if summoned by his words undead growls began to fill the dripstone cave, quickly followed by the undead abominations shambling out from behind the maze of the stalagmites, blocking the exit and completely surrounding us.
‘Well then, that is unfortunate.’
“You little bastard!” I hear Noah call out in anger, quickly followed by the crack of his sledgehammer caving into an undead's skull. I hear other cries of outrage from my friends as the distance between us is filled with shambling corpses that stop moving once in position as if they are purposely cutting me off from my friends.
“Undead control hmmm?” I mutter to myself “Better remove the leader then.” I look towards the sickly looking man to get his location and step into the spirit realm. Instantly the rancid undead are replaced with a crowd of feint ghostly spirits crying out in pain as they are twisted and torn apart only to be stitched back together for the process to begin again.
“The souls of the damned,” I grunt out in pain from being in the foreign dimension filled with red tinted miasma that attacked my mind, body and soul. After training in the spirit realm a few times I discovered that I could see faint outlines of the souls tied to undead that are left to live out their punishment for bringing the world to ruin. Or at least that was my theory on why the tormented spirit seemed to follow the undead.
After sparing them a brief sympathetic glance I run off in the direction I believe the man to be. “It's times like these I’m glad I gave my parents their second death,” I say while going around a partially torn up soul.
“What…” a raspy voice cuts through the underground chamber like an axe through an infant causing me to stop and spin around in fear. “...An unhinged thing to say.”
There half hiding behind a stalagmite was a 20 m tall spindly humanoid creature with rough charcoal looking skin. It tilted its overly large head as it looked at me and let out a rattling breath that sounded like it was gargling gravel.
‘Fucking wraith!’ My body freezes momentarily from primal fear as I feel my soul ache at the beings mere presence
“Isn't that right?” Another raspy breath breaks up its distorted speech. “Number 39856” It grins widely as my eyes widen.
“You little pervert,” I managed to force from my voice box. “How long have you been watching me?” I stumble slightly as I feel my very being twitch. ‘Why do I feel so weak? So small and scared?’ I grit my teeth and stare the Wraith in the eyes even as my legs shake slightly.
Its grin only widens, its maw stretching enough to split its face in half and reveal a black abyss of swirling screaming souls that the creature called a mouth. “Don't need to watch. Fate watches. The consumer. One of the seven. One of the dying. One of the forgotten. One. with. Me.”
With that, its blackened arm reaches out to touch my face but stops midway. “Well, that's awfully cryptic…” I start to say before I am interrupted by the rough voice that echoes across the red tinted cave.
“Rip and tear. Eat and grow.” It struggles to say before it suddenly lunges at me as the pressure on my soul dissipates, its mouth wide and screaming bloody murder.
‘Well that isn't ideal’
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POV Ava
I was feeling good, optimistic even about our journey into the cave so far. We managed to escape the big jellyfish thing in the sky and even defeat quite a few Crawlers, securing points from a God with a capital G.
I mean the microdosing stung but it made the idea of fighting more Crawlers in the future even easier and when we woke up we decided to try and help someone which made me feel a bit better about ignoring everyone else in the surrounding area around Jacobs house.
But then it all went to hell. We ran in to help the decreasingly human looking man in his mid 30s who looked increasingly sickly and green the closer we got. But we kept going in the hopes that we could help. Well most of us did. Jacob being his paranoid and untrusting self held back from our mad charge to ask the man questions that in hindsight we should have paid attention to.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.
Now we were stuck in the middle of a horde of undead seemingly controlled by the man shouting and a tall woman with a snake’s tail for legs wielding an improvised spear made from what looked to be a sharpened bench press bar.
‘It wasn't looking good, to be honest," I thought while throwing balls of water at the undead trying to get past Mais's pets. “Where is Jacob?!?!” Yells Noah as he clears through two undead in one swing before kicking another one away and into the humanoid monsters behind it.
“I can’t see him!” Calls back Ella as she lets loose another arrow into the ever approaching undead.
“Oh, darling he fell as soon as our friends came out of hiding. But don't worry I will make sure to take good care of his body.” The snake woman giggles and makes a show of licking her lips just as Jacob appears out of thin air. His disturbingly limp body flies through the air with droplets of blood trailing behind him as he falls into the sea of shuffling corpses.
“Jacob!” We all call out in concern and begin to try and make our way over to his limp form before one of the undead rips out his throat.
“Kill the fallen one and bring me his cube, the rest of you..” The sickly man who lured us into this trap started to issue his orders before the sound of a dull roar and bones snapping drowned him out. I send another quick glance towards Jacobs's position to see his brightly flushed skin stained red from the undead spine he just shattered with his teeth.
‘Holy shit’
I watch as he swallows his mouth full of spine and flesh as the undead he is holding melts into the form of an axe that finds its way into the head of the monster next to him. “You fucking piece of rancid shit!!!” He screams into the crowd of undead with murder in his eyes and blood leaking from his mouth.
“You incestuous!” Another undead dies only to reform into a cage to contain two other “Goat fucking!” The ground surrounding him turned to liquid, causing 5 walking corpses to sink into the now solid stone and lose their heads in the next instant “Cum dripping cunt rocket!”.
Each kill caused more undead to become tangled in the former comrade's corpses as Jacob stormed through the horde in a blind rage, melting stone into pitfalls, forming blades and weapons from skulls and blood while screaming profanity. “I bet your mum wishes she swallowed you, you burning orphanage of a human being!”
“Fucking hell, he's not letting up.” Mia snickers next to me as I send another water whip tipped with chipped stone into the head of another undead.
“I’m going to plant a mango tree in that snake bitch’s cunt and fuck your corpse in its shade you beatle dicked shit stain!” By this time he had made it to the two mutated looking humans and dodged an attack from the snake lady's spear. I quickly look away again to focus on my surroundings.
“What's got him so pissed off?” Sam asks while delivering his javelin into an undead's skull through its eye. Nobody answered but we were all concerned at Jacobs' newfound rage. Careful as to not trip over the unmoving corpses I lash out my whip at the 15 or so undead that were left. We spend the next few moments fighting when a distorted scream cuts through the cave causing my head to snap in the direction I last saw Jacob and the snake woman fighting only to see said snake woman’s spear tied around her torso.
She was covered in cuts and large gouges that looked suspiciously like human bite marks. She tried to wiggle away from the almost feral looking Jacob but was trapped by dried stone and the metal pipe tied around her arms. I could see tears running down her face as she tried to plead with Jacob but he just continued to stalk towards her.
I glanced to the side to see the sickly looking man running away as fast as he could, almost tripping on the uneven stone floor. “Ava!” I feel myself being pulled to the side by Mai just in time to dodge an undead's jaws “Pay attention!”
Grimacing, I begin to attack my adversaries with renewed focus, commanding the water to trip, slash and strike anything that comes close to me and my friends. With the undead leader gone, they became disorganised and easier to deal with. We used our weapons superior reach and teamwork to keep the undead at a distance and slowly whittle down the rest of their number until the whole horde was lying dead at our feet, their dark blackish blood pooling in every crevice of the rough floor. I gag slightly at the smell and quickly put on a face mask to try and help with the smell.
“Is everyone okay?” Asks Sam, his head on a swivel to try and see if anyone needs help. After getting confirmation from Noah, Ella, Mia and myself he looks over towards Jacob and calls out to him, only to receive nothing but silence from the man in question but plenty of sobs of pain from the snake woman.
“Jacob! You good?” Call Noah as he runs over to his shivering frame. The rest of us follow, careful to watch our step through the liquid corpses so as to not trip. The closer I got the more I realised that Jacob was not okay.
His veins were a visible black pressed against his pale skin making his face look like a crisscrossing maze of blackened inc. Pale blue eyes were now replaced by dull grey orbs that stared lifelessly at the bound snake woman. What we mistook for shivering earlier was his whole body shaking and twitching uncontrollably as he snarled and snapped at nothing.
“Jacob?” Noah, who was the first to reach him, asked in concern, reaching his hand out to touch his friend. Only for Jacob to flinch away and scream as he reached up to clasp his head in pain and start to rip out his own hair.
“What the fuck did you do to him!” Noah yells at the bound snake woman, trying to make his voice heard over Jacobs' terrible screams of agony. The snake woman tries to tell a furious Noah that she didn't do anything and there's no need to follow through with his threats of slowly crushing her with his hammer.
Meanwhile, Sam tries to stop Noah from torturing the woman and Ella attempts to get closer to the trembling mess of a man but he just flinches away and snaps at the air as he screams his terrible scream. Then, as suddenly as it started, it stopped.
The sudden silence filled the cave before Jacob, who was currently standing over the head of the reptilian woman, started retching almost as loud as his screams. His gagging and retching did make him stay still long enough for Ella to grab him while Mia and I helped support his shaking form. “What's wrong with him?” I ask Ella in a panic but she just looks on in confusion.
“There's nothing physically wrong with him other than stretched veins and arteries. It's like he's been stuffed full of something and now he's trying to expel it from his body.” I watch in morbid fascination as the blacked veins reduce and a dark swirling sludge starts to seep from his mouth and fall onto the floor.
It was at that point that we had to back away from the suffering Jacob as the black sludge seemed to burn and melt anything it came into contact with. Without our support, he slumped onto his knees and continued to hurl up vast quantities of acidic sludge that I tried my best to wash away with water.
“What the fuck is wrong with him?!?! Get him the fuck away from him!” Cried out the Snake woman who was a mere 20 cm away from our vomiting friend. We all chose to ignore her in favour of watching our friend's mouth stretch at an impossibly wide angle as tendrils of what looked like tar crawled out of Jacob's mouth and frail around in the open air.
“What the fuck is that?!?! Keep it away from me! Please, I will do anything! Please don't let it touch me!” She tried to wiggle away but the constraints holding her were too tight and the metal and earth too strong. “Please!” At this Sam finally snaps out of his trance and tries to help the pleading woman only to be held back by Noah just in time to avoid the almost labrador-sized slug made of wriggling tentacles splashes onto her face and seeps into her pours causing her to scream and thrash around in agony.
With the last of whatever the hell was in Jacob finally left him, he snapped out of whatever trance he was in and looked around in visible confusion and mild panic.
“What happened?” He tries to ask in a hoarse voice but we are all too stunned to answer as we watch in horror as the poor woman begs for death and shrieks in pain.
“ Who are you?” He asks the women thrashing around next to him in bewilderment.
“Kill me” She manages to cry out in between spasms of pain.
“that, is a truly unfortunate name.” He mutters while looking around and rubbing his throat in discomfort, trying to figure out what was happening.
“Please…” The woman starts only to stop as her eyes glaze over and a glowing blue box appears on her chest.
“What the fuck was that?” Mai yells, voicing what was on everyone's mind as we all turn to stare at Jacob in abstract horror.
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POV Oliver 1 Hour later
“So you're telling me, you left Ivy in the hands of a bunch of humans, lost most of our undead and don't even have anything to show for it?” A cold voice is followed by an even colder presence, my breath becoming visible as the large bulky woman leans forward into moss light, revealing parts of her pale white fur and ivory tusks.
“Yes boss, I’m sorry boss.” I stammer out as I look down to not meet the dangerous woman's eyes.
She lets out a guttural growl before sitting up and hiding her monstrous face in the shadows. “You disappoint me, Oliver, you let one of our own die to a human, a lesser creature, and didn't even manage to avenge them.”
“I’m sorry,” I say again hoping to lessen her ire. ‘I didn't say she was dead, she was alive when I left.’ I think internally but dare not voice my thoughts out loud.
“Stop your useless apologising.” She snaps causing me to close my mouth immediately. “You are to tell us everything you remember about these humans.” She pauses for a moment then yells at the 2.5m tall one eyed man to my side.
“Toby prepare a small service for Ivy’s passing!”
“Yes Boss.” His low deep voice makes my bones tremble at his pure physical might. He nods his head and wanders off into the darkness of the cave, presumably to organise the ceremony.
“You will then be on collocation duty for the rest of the week to make up for the forces you have lost.” She then gestures for me to begin the more indepth telling of the battle. I cleared my throat and began telling the story, I started with how I lured them in with cries for help and how only one of the humans was suspicious but it was too late. I explained how the suspicious human disappeared and what I remembered seeing of the human's powers.
“At the start, it was looking good with the humans panicking and confused and one of them disappeared but once they rallied it became a stalemate. Then the suspicious one came flying through the air like a maniac, stabbing and screaming like there was no tomorrow. Which wouldn't have been a problem but then he started melting everything, trapping the dead and Ivy.” I pause and take a breath, not that my undead lungs needed one but it was a hard habit to shake.
“Melting things you say?” I cringe at the voice of the unstable young man who lurked in the shadows to the boss's left. “What did this melting man look like?” He asks as he slowly steps into the dim light of the moss,
I look at the Boss but she does say anything to refocus the conversation so I turn to the young man. “How old would you say he was?” His face, half masked by shadows, smiles slightly revealing red stained fangs. “Did you catch a name?”
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POV RETRACTED
“Well, the timeline is clean so whatever altered the wraith covered their tracks pretty well,” I state to my partner after I come out of the past and look upon the wraith's corpse.
“I couldn't find any energy signatures either.” They state, tapping their crystalline head with a glittering appendage.
“Did you check the parasitic curse?” I ask them while trying to monitor the timeline of the surrounding area using the All Clock given to me by higher management.
“Yup, removed it from participant 39856 without much difficulty but it didn't lead anywhere.” They mumble. “Even made sure he didn't die to not affect the show or experiment through outside forces.”
I sigh. “So to go over it again.” I rub my hands over my face in exasperation. “A wraith, strong enough enough to, at the very least, be from the 16th event, appeared in the spirit realm a day ago.”
“Yup.”
“It then developed a basic level of sentients and moved around at seemingly random but just happened to find participant 39856 and followed him until he stepped into the spirit realm.”
“Correct.”
“And upon meeting it doesn't immediately attack and instead freezes his soul in place and starts giving a cryptic message on how participant 39856 could gain power using his abilities.”
“Mmhmm”
“Then proceeds to infect him with a parasitic curse of gluttony, lose all reasoning and punch him into his original reality.”
“Sounds about right.”
I give a small glare at their unhelpfulness but carry on. “At which point we are alerted to the anomaly, kill the wraith and heal the participant to avoid contaminating the show and experiment.”
I sigh and look in the past hoping to have missed anything but come up empty once again. “Which leads us with no suspect or means.”
“At least the motive is fairly easy.” They say while watching participant 39856 remove the last of the parasitic curse from his system.
“The higher Gods and Deities do like betting on things that the time flow can’t be peeked at or altered. And while I can understand messing with Jeremy Wheels’s show to a certain extent.” I speculate.
“A powerful God but just a God all the same.” They chime in.
“But daring to touch any of the Child's experiments is ill advised on so many cosmic and molecular levels.”
“Alegared experiment, Nobody God or Deity, has heard from the Child in any official capacity for 37.4 cycles. Maybe the boss is just using his name to scare away competition?”
“Either way it's above our pay grade, let's just send our findings to management and leave the higher questions for people who don't mind being obliterated through the space time continuum.”
“Agreed, Drinks at Vocatus later?”
“Sure but it's your round.”
With that we left Earth, model 626, timeline B13 to submit our report and get drunk enough to kill a house fly from Timit.