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Wheels of chaos
Chapter 11 Taking a dip

Chapter 11 Taking a dip

“What the fuck was that?” Mai yells as everyone stares at me in abstract horror.

“Well it looks like a blue box, maybe it's the inventory?” I mutter while looking around in confusion. ‘How did I get over here?’ I think before Mai yells again. “Not the box! You went apeshit and killed that woman!” She yells out in a panic.

I look around at their shocked faces and take note of their stunned silence and Sam’s thousand-yard stare as he looks blankly at the snake woman's corpse. “I did? Huh, I didn't know I was able to bend stuff yet.” I poke the metallic pole wrapped around the mutilated corpse with interest before another outburst distracts me from my muddled thoughts.

“That's it? You just killed someone and you are more worried about being able to bend stuff? What about her family? Her friends?” Sam finally snaps out of his shock and asks, his questions becoming louder and louder as he tries to make sense of what has just happened.

“Oh yeah that's a good point, they may come after us looking for revenge or something. Sorry I’m a bit out of it, I kind of blacked out, and the last few minutes are a blur.” I say, appreciating that someone was thinking of the bigger picture. ‘Now what happened? I went into the spirit realm…’

“That's not what I meant Jacob and you know it! You can't just kill someone and pretend that nothing has happened, she had a life before you took it.” Sam starts, interrupting my musing and catching me off guard about something I don't remember doing. ‘Maybe she was helping us?’ I question internally before Sam answers the very same question within his next breath.

“Even if she was trying to hurt us doesn't give you the right to take a life. We shouldn't kill the living.” He states with righteousness and conviction, “We should bury her at least.” He finishes off while looking at the mutilated corpse that was still fizzing with whatever acidic substance came out of my body.

“What the hell are you talking about?” I squirt my eyes at him in utter confusion “You, wha…Never mind, that's a whole other thing. Now what happened in the last two minutes?”

“You really don't remember?” Asks Noah. “You went nuts, starting biting everything like a wild animal while forming weapons from corpses. I saw you rip out an undead's neck and swallow it, spine and all.” He states looking at me in concern.

‘That's kind of metal, fucking disgusting but pretty hardcore. It does add context to all the disturbed looks though.’

“What's the last thing you remember?” Ella asks, laying her hand on my head and sending her soothing power into my skull. “There's still nothing physically wrong with you, almost like whatever that was, healed you of all the minor injuries left from yesterday.” She mumbles but keeps her hand on my head until I shift slightly, causing it to fall off my head and go limp.

“The last thing I remember was going into the spirit realm to get the jump on the guy controlling the undead when some big ass wraith started talking about watching me and that I was the consumer. Hmm, oh and that I was one with him? You think I was possessed?” I retell my adventures in the spirit realm to the group as I try to figure out what happened.

“Can people get possessed?” Asks Ava in concern at which I just point towards Mia.

“Well shit, guess that would explain a few things? If possession is anything like it is in fiction at least.” Noah shrugs.

“Hmmm. Mai, can you tell vaguely what's going on in a creature's mind before you take it over?” I ask suddenly.

“Yes…Why?” She asks, unsure where I was going with this.

“Can you almost take over my mind to see if it's still there?” I look at her and slowly start to get off the black and red stained floor.

“I can try but I've never done something like that before and your mind may be too much to look through, I've never done it with a human before.” She looks thoughtful.

“What? What's happening?” Ava asks in confusion.

“Got to make sure I’m not a ticking time bomb,” I state as I walk over to Mai and grin at her.

“But..” Ava starts but I interrupt her. “No time for butts or coconuts, take over my mind, body and soul baby!” I place Mai's hands on my temples and stare into her eyes. ‘Time to find out if the wraith was sending a cryptic message or was just a cunt.’

Not needing any more prompting Mia started to send her hive mind-based ability into my skull and probe around. While Ella's ability felt soothing and comforting, Mia's felt like ants were crawling into my head from any orifice they could find. Needless to say, it was unpleasant but I just pressed her hands harder against my skull, grit my teeth and let her power invade my mind.

My legs shake and my teeth clench as I endure the mind invasion while fighting every instinct I have to fight back the invasive ability that wants me to give into Mia, to worship her, to die for her. ‘Oh do shut up you wee little bitch.’

After what felt like forever she finally let go and stumbled back. “Ok. your mind is super confusing and I am now even more confused about the weird shit you do, but I wasn't able to find anything in there that wasn't you." Mia says while widening her eyes and blinking rapidly.

“So I’m good to go?” I ask hopefully, ignoring the statement about my mind.

“As far as I could tell.” She says now rubbing her temples and scrunching up her face.

“Was his mind that bad?” Noah asks in amusement.

“It was strange, he thinks in rapidly changing images and references to shows and books he's never seen or read and…Just…. How do you think clearly?” She turns back towards me and asks in genuine confusion.

I just grin and give two thumbs up, not really caring that my mind was a confusing tangled mess to Mia, I had more pressing concerns to think about. I take out my notebook and jot down everything I remember about my encounter with the wraith, underlining anything I think might be useful before putting it away again to gather some of the glowing moss that surrounded us while the others talked amongst themselves. ‘Consuming or eating was mentioned. Rip and tear suggest violence and combat. I’m meant to eat my fallen enemies? That would be far too much food to realistically eat with how much fighting we’ve been doing.’ I looked away from the carefully harvested moss to ask for my friends' help in gathering the new resource for a few minutes before we left.

‘Wraiths live in the spirit realm, where souls travel through. Am I meant to eat souls? But I haven't figured out how to interact with them yet.’ I glance over at Noah who picked up the glowing blue cube from the dead snake woman.

‘So I need to find a high concentration of power to eat from fallen creatures. That is if I can trust the words of an out of place wraith who left me alive for no reason? Why keep me alive? Killing me wasn't what it wanted to do.’ I roll up another batch of moss and place it in my inventory running through multiple possibilities to try and figure out the answer.

‘So what did it want to do? Send a message, which it did successfully. Why? It wants you to know something. No shit. It wanted us to be better? A warning and a potential method for growth. Why? We are in a game show. If I were to become stronger it could be more entertaining? I could win bets, one of the seven with no real offensive abilities becoming stronger and better could be a good return rate? Or does it want to fatten me up for later? Either way, I should become stronger. Now, the only hyper-condensed thing I can think of that I can get after killing something is the weird monster crystals that can apparently be sold in the future. So they have an unknown value and in eastern stories, people could absorb the power of beast cores to help them cultivate?’

As I think of weird and far-fetched theories to justify my plans of eating my potential money source a blue flash of light comes from behind me causing me to spin around with a knife in hand only to see Noah no longer holding the cube. But he didn't hold my attention for long as I looked towards the vast amount of meat that now surrounded him.

My stomach twists and churns as I scrunch up my face at the unmistakable sight of human corpses. Some were skinned, most were cut up as if done by a butcher and there were even a few heads left that stared blankly off into the distance with dead vacant eyes.

“Who keeps cut up corpses in their inventories?” I hear Noah yell in a mixture of confusion and disgust.

I hear gagging and sounds of discomfort from my friends as I approach one of the heads that sat in a slowly growing puddle of blood on the floor. Crouching down next to the head I ignore the smell and stiff coldness to peel back the lips to reveal white teeth. ‘They weren't undead.’

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“That was from the snake woman's inventory?” Ava asks in horror.

I look over to the large leg to my side and notice the missing meat and smooth cut marks upon the flesh.

“Yeah I opened it by accident and this shit came out,” Noah says in a softer voice as he looks at the butchered human flesh.

“Well shit, did anyone else have cannibalism on their apocalypse bingo card?” I ask, taking out a sheet of paper with bingo written in multiple colours and underlined on top.

“Oh for fuck sake Jacob, now is not the time!” Sam yells in annoyance as he glares between the dead snake woman and the contents of her inventory. I glance at Ella for confirmation but she just shakes her head causing me to quickly cross it off the bingo sheet and put it back into my inventory without any fuss.

What followed was a quite morbid affair of gathering our supplies and looking through the items in the snake women’s inventory that weren't cut-up pieces of human flesh, until we headed out of the large cave and back into the stone tunnels that we came from. Luckily Mia made note of our route so we managed to backtrack to our original path and continued to head deeper into the earth.

A sombre mood seemed to hang over the group as we hunted and killed more cave crawlers and conversation was scarce so I just focused on developing my echolocation training. Occasionally I would get bored and try to bend various pieces of stone or metal by trying to find the sweet spot between liquid and solid so that the object wouldn't shatter or melt under the pressure but I was making slow progress.

I debated eating a monster crystal but decided to wait until we were in a safer position in case I was wrong about my assumption and collapsed or something, although hopefully, my abilities will allow me to bypass any negatives of eating random unknown potential energy sources.

Despite my training and the increasingly large number of cave crawlers we encountered, I was quickly becoming bored, which was why I was so intrigued to find a small fork in the tunnel and a dark pool of water that led into a tunnel filled with the frigid liquid.

After much debating I finally managed to convince the others that letting me go into the dark watery abyss alone was an excellent idea which led to me now in said abyss, flashlight in a plastic bag in one hand, rope tied around my waist and freezing my balls off. ‘I fucking hate water levels, why did I want to do this?’ While I thought the tunnels were claustrophobic they had nothing on the dark cold depths of the underwater passage. Even though I can breathe the murky water just fine, I feel as if I'm suffocating and the tunnels are slowly closing in around me, blocking off my exit and redistricting my movements.

A couple of minutes ago I started a mantra to keep me focused through what I now realise to be a great fear of mine. ‘Excitement, power, loot. Excitement, power, loot. What's at the end of the tunnel? The answer is simple! Excitement, power, loot!’ but it did little to distract my thoughts from the confined space and literal tones of earth above me.

‘This is fine, nothing to worry about, only Excite… Fucker!’ A sharp pain shoots through my exposed ankle as what feels like hundreds of needle-like teeth piece through the thin skin and scratch the bone of the joint. I quickly send a pulse of my budget echolocation through my foot and sense the head of what appears to be a large eel attached to my left ankle.

I spin around in the water and shine my light towards my lower leg to reveal a darkish brown segmented worm-looking creature with specks of red dotted around the head. Its thick wrinkled body pulsed and contracted as it drank my blood and wiggled around my leg trying to wrap its elongated body around my calf.

‘Why is it always the ugly things trying to eat me?’ I internally grumble, lifting my leg towards my head with one hand while the other held the flashlight I bit down on the leech/eel-looking creature trying to feast on my life juice like it was an all you can eat buffet. My enhanced jaws and teeth rip into its rubbery flesh as my mouth is filled with the taste of its foul brain matter ‘I guess they could say the same though.’ I grin as I spit out the crystal and put it into my inventory as I watch the disgusting blood and grey matter float in chunks throughout the water.

‘I properly shouldn't have put blood in the water with bloody thirsty monster leech eels around huh?’ As if reading my mind three more monstrous parasites came swimming through the murky depths towards me. “Bring it on you worm looking cunts!” I try to yell into the depths but it comes out garbled as I solidify a tight lair of water around my ankle wound and kick my body through the water towards my would-be assailants.

Once I was close enough I solidified the water surrounding the closest leech head into a muzzle and let it slam into my body as I stabbed my knife into the body and slid it lengthwise along its belly to gut the oversized parasite before storing its still warm corpse into my inventory.

The seconded leech eel was drawn into my waiting jaws through the suction of me inhaling litres of water, allowing me to bite through its flesh before forming a water spear tip onto my wrist as the last leech eel tried to latch onto my bare skin, causing it to impale itself. With a snort, I collected the crystals from the corpses along with the leech in my inventory and continued on my swim into the darkened depths with increased vigilance.

I had six more encounters with groups of the newly named leech eels, bringing their death count up to 21, and covering my body with several more cuts and bite marks than I was happy with before I finally found the end of the narrow watery tunnel. It led into a cave roughly the size of two houses that was filled with a few shallow pools of mysterious glowing liquid.

Oh and a giant mutated frog with nothing but murder behind its empty black eyes. Definitely can't forget the murder frog that sat taller than me with rolls of fat that stretched its acidic green skin with sharp spear-sized spikes coming out of its spine and a white hairy beard growing out its chin.

“Hey, how's it going?” I politely ask the frog half expecting an answer as I bring a glass bottle filled with petrol, polystyrene and a rag out of my inventory. “I am sorry to intrude into your home Mr G man but, oh wait frog starts with an F,” I mutter the last part to myself as I shiver slightly from the cold air and damp clothes.

Taking an unnecessary breath to start again I suddenly find myself dodging out of the way of a bright red blur that just misses my throat and stabs into my right shoulder “Ow! What the fuck F man!” I feel my shoulder crack as I fall to my knees in pain and drop the flashlight to the floor. I glance at my shoulder to see a spear tipped blood red appendage tear itself out of my arm and back into the frog's waiting mouth.

“So not cool F man.” I hiss out as I collapse onto the floor and solidify my blood leaving my new wound to stop it from leaking my greatly diminished blood supply. I then liquefy the stone floor under my torso and hold myself up with my three functioning limbs as I stare at the…Spear-tongued frog? ‘Yeah sure let's go with that.’

“Come on you secret encounter mini boss looking ass, Eat me!!” I yell at the frog and wiggle around on the floor until it opens its mouth and I see a flash of red before my vision is filled with a red tinted miasma that attacks my mind, body and soul.

I quickly roll to my side and bounce back to my original reality in time to see the tongue stuck in the solidified stone. Without wasting time I place the Molotov cocktail on the floor and light it with my functioning hand before throwing it at the creature, and miss by about a metre.

“Well, that was a waste” I watched the flames for a moment before turning my head back towards the trapped tongue to see it wiggling and shifting shapes as it slowly freed itself from the confines of its stone prison. Before I could think of a way to secure the tongue I heard a loud thump alerting me to the Large frog slowly hopping towards me, its front clawed limbs coming into view as its hind legs hefted its bulky frame towards me.

‘Slow main body, claws, fast spear like tongue. Remove tongue, trap body, kill frog, treat wounds, drink mystery liquid.’ A grin forms on my face as I take out a knife and run towards the tongue and start sawing at it like a madman as I bite and chew on the rubbery flesh. A roar of pain escaped the frog as I ripped and tore into the tongue, my right arm hung uselessly as my eyes darted around, watching the massive frog get ever closer, its beady black eyes filled with hate now as it got closer to the source of its pain.

Sending another glance towards the sharp claws of the oversized frog that was getting ever closer I bit into the tongue one last time, causing it to finally be torn in two and spray blood everywhere as the Spear-tongued frog was finally relieved of its weapon-like appendage. Or at least the half that wasn't trapped in stone and lying on the floor in a pool of blood.

With its main means of attack gone, and litres of blood now spilling from the frog's mouth it tried to turn towards the glowing pools and heave its hulking form towards the mysterious liquid within as fast as its limbs could drag it. As tempted as I was to let it interact with the liquid on its own accord, I was on a time limit with people waiting for me and challenges to complete so I trapped its legs in stone and stabbed it a few dozen times, my short blades not doing more then leaving thin cuts on its rotund form, followed by throwing more liquid stone onto its body.

When I was satisfied that it was successfully trapped and weakened I formed a bowl from stone and filled it with the mysterious glowing liquid before heading back towards my willing test subject. “Are you ready for your medicine Mr F? Why am I talking to a frog?” I stare at the murder filled eyes of the spear-tongued frog.

“Don't look at me like that Mr F, you started this, and you know you want the magic moo juice, you were heading towards it after all. I just needed to find out if it's toxic for people who don't have a magic mouth.”

Once I arrived in front of my would be killer I stood to watch it let out a pitiful croak, belching out a mouthful of blood as it opened its mouth, staining its beared a deeper red. “You would have my sympathy if you didn't try to kill me. Now magic is goo, what do you do?” I gently poured the bowl's contents onto the fog and watched as some of the more shallow cuts stopped bleeding, upon further experiments I found that the liquid healed the cuts and scrapes faster when applied directly and consuming the liquid didn't instantly kill the amphibian.

“Ella can monitor the effects in more depth if it's not an instant kill,” I mutter softly before taking out my modified javelin and shoving it into the roof of the beast's mouth, killing it instantly. “Maybe it was a toad and that's why it was so mad? Hmmm, I don't know the difference so rest in peace Mr F.” I gave a breath nod of acknowledgement towards the massive frog as I removed my still functioning arm from its overly large mouth. I spend a few more minutes within the glowing cave dismantling the frog for its meat and crystal as well as drinking my fill of the healing liquid to fix my arm, cuts and fatigue.

I used up one of the shallow pools for my personal healing and experiments, leaving me with three more pools of liquid that I quickly solidified to store in my inventory where it would stay solid until I took it out again. With my business within the cave finally completed I dive back into the cold depths, retrieve the rope I trapped within the stone ceiling around my waist and start following it through the dark to return to my friends.

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Captain Alexander POV

After the first event started and those blasted jellyfish looking monstrosities appeared we had to abandon the university after tens of our people were taken into the sky never to be seen again. Our guns did nothing, anyone who tried to help or fight back was electrocuted and taken up into the sky, their mouths open in a silent scream.

So we ran. Ran underground like rats. Ran through the tunnels until those bastard tentacles stopped picking us off one by one. Ran through all the holes, chaos and passages. I lost most of my team in the chaos and endless maze of tunnels, only being able to give the order to return to the university when they could over the radio before the signal cut out.

So now I'm running through these dark tunnels with two soldiers and four civilians, fighting off giant centipedes that soaked up bullets with their erratic movement and tough shells, at least the undead still died to a good old fashioned shot to the head. We spent last night in a cave with glowing moss, eating the food from Jamie's enhanced inventory while Charlotte kept watch with her danger sensing abilities, meanwhile, the civilians proved once again that they were useless.

They told us their abilities immediately, not that it was needed for the unnatural looking extra arms coming out of Leo's torso. He looked inhuman and freakish but I couldn't be picky given our current situation, still If we ever got back to a functioning society I would station him and the other inhuman looking mutants away from me, they gave me the creeps. The other three at least looked human even if they didn't help in the slightest, happy to hide behind us and complain about how hard everything is and how they couldn't possibly kill a single fucking centipede like the worthless shits they are.

But they could carry the less desirable monster parts and camping equipment and clean up after my soldiers so they had their uses, and if they could make use of their abilities they could be even better. Tommy could track anything he touched but for some godforsaken reason didn't bother to track anyone we could have met up with. John could apparently manipulate his bones but said it was too uncomfortable to do so the useless shit.

Their one saving grace was Billie, she could gain people's knowledge by touching them and had taken the opportunity to learn what she could from the people at the university about their different powers and any self defence experiences creating a self-imposed boot camp for the previously overweight woman. Despite this, she still wasn't in the best shape and we didn't trust her with firearms so she just stayed hiding behind the soldiers muttering to herself about the things she didn't want to forget. It was annoying but it stopped us from zoning out in these endless tunnels.

Despite Billie’s potential I truly believe each of the civilians would have died or at the very most be hiding at the tops of the tunnels waiting to die or for the event to change, which was why I was so surprised to round a corner and find a group of five teenagers in basic amour and improvised cold weapons standing around a dark pool of water at a fork in the tunnels.

I look at the kids, staring at their young faces. They stare back, their faces filled with nervousness but no surprise. ‘They knew we were coming.’ I glance at the pool again and notice a length of rope going into its depths before looking back to the teen at the front of the group, he stood tall with broad shoulders with a large shield that looked to be made from a modified car door and fortified with twisted metal that he used to hide the other teens. He held a sledgehammer in his right hand that was stained with the dark red of blood and wore a determined expression on his face. ‘Now he would make a good soldier’

“Hello there.” The only other male in the group said, poking his head around his larger comrade so we could see them. “My name is Sam…”