POV Alex
Location Antarctica
…So without further ado let the fun begin and let the wheels spin!]
Rapidly swirling colours invade my retinas causing my already malnourished body to feel increasingly nauseous. ‘This can't get any worse,’ I cry out in my mind, careful not to make a noise that would attract the animated corpses outside of the bathroom. ‘Powers I can't use without hurting myself, locked in a bathroom and stuck in a research centre in the middle of the least hospitable continent on the planet. Now I have to deal with whatever fresh hell this will bring.’ I silently sob as I watch the wheel slow down ‘I don't know how much more I can take.’
Once again all the options were blurred until it finally landed on a section of a deep navy blue. Before I could read the long line of text it disappeared before another announcement filled my senses that, if my theory was correct, translated directly into information for my brain to process.
[ Event: Endless caves.
Description: An endless cave network has formed under the surface of the earth's land mass with small openings that lead to the surface. The caves are filled with unknown creatures and resources. While you can stay up upon the surface beware of what lurks in the sky.
Challenges: Kill a Cave crawler, Travel 100 miles of the endless caves, and Kill a Sky Lurker.
Misc information: Descriptions and misc information of this level will only be available within the tutorial. The undead will increase in intelligence and speed. Undead will temporarily develop night vision. Cave crawlers are a species similar to Earth's centipede and are predatory arthropods that have a gem in their head that can be sold for points on the interdimensional shop. Upon a person's death, they will drop a small cube holding the contents of their inventory. Humans will be given a chance to live the Endless caves before they partially clove for the next event.
Please enjoy :) ]
I sit in silence, digesting the information, trying to figure out what to do. By the sound of the spirits tangled and twisted within the animated corpses screaming in agony, they are still wandering the corridor outside. ‘Their increased intelligence does not appear to take into account things they know before. Otherwise, they would be banging at the door until they tore it off its hinges.’ I continue to sit with my back pressed against the thin white plastic door chewing on my thumb, not noticing how the fear has caused me to redevelop a habit from my early childhood.
Taking my thumb out of my mouth I look around trying to locate the source of a low rumbling that had started to reverberate through the small bathroom. ‘It's coming from underneath me?’ Realising what was happening I quickly got away from the doorway as the ground began to give way. The smooth vinyl floor begins to sag in on itself before disappearing altogether, revealing a large circular hole about 2m in diameter. Its walls were a coarse stone-looking substance that travelled down at a slight angle into its eerie dark depths. Most importantly it removed half of the door which has allowed the animated corpses and their screaming souls a way into my little refuge.
“Oh no.” Despite my best efforts a slight gasp of horror escapes my lips as they too were attracted by the tunnel forming, and are now less than a metre away staring at me with deranged eyes and outstretched hands. “Oh no.”
In a panic born from the desire to be anywhere but a small enclosed bathroom with a hole that goes who knows where and a group of animated corpses, I activate my second ability and teleport. The only issue with my teleporting is that I need a line of sight and I lose all sense of balance and depth perception when I arrive in the narrow corridor. Surrounded by animated corpses. On all sides. With no way out.
“Noooooo.” I manage to whine as I tumble from the teleportation side effects. My ability to predict attacks goes wild as I see ghostly outlines of clawed hands reaching out to strike me just before the real things grab me, causing me to feel the pain before they even touch me. Their blacked nails tear into my skin and pull me towards their open maws where their deformed jagged teeth wait to rip into my flesh.
Blood gushes out of my shoulder as it is torn into and my final ability tries to form the red liquid into a blade to stab through its skull but it's too weak. The sight of my blood and pain almost makes me pass out but I manage to teleport once again, I pop in and out of existence and appear outside the group of walking corpses. But in a twisted sense of irony without them holding me up and supporting me I fall onto the floor, smashing my nose into the cold hard vinyl in the process, smearing its dull blue with bright red.
The world spins, my stomach aches from starvation and my body is battered and bleeding from my undead tormentors. “ Please…” I try to plead as I hear them come ever closer. Lying in a pile of my own blood I let out another whimper as the first of my attackers falls on top of me before biting down onto my already bloody shoulder.
“We were friends” I sob out as more and more of my former colleagues fall onto me to begin their feast on my flesh as I cry out in sorrow and pain. With tears streaming down my eyes and blood pooling in my throat I take my final breath before oblivion takes me.
[You have died. Due to being one of the 7, Earth's inhabitants will now get a boon to help them towards their goal of survival. To keep the rest of the 7 safe this knowledge will not be shared. Thank you for playing the Gods game, we hope you enjoyed your time on the show.]
As what I can only describe as my soul slowly dissipated into nothingness I watched my body convulse violently before rising up and joining the very things that killed it.
[One of the 7 has died. There are 6/7 left within the show]
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POV Jacob
…Please enjoy :) ]
“Awww look at that Ella the evil message of death told us to enjoy ourselves, isn’t that nice?” I ask while rapidly putting on the motorcross armour as it was too uncomfortable to sleep in despite my best efforts. “It even has a cute little smiley face.” I finish putting on my armoured trousers and grab the knife from under my pillow.
“Looks like it's caves, We didn't do anything for caves.” Ella ignores my previous statements and heads toward the door to open it, revealing Mai, Ava and Noah also exiting their rooms onto the landing.
“Christ on a bike, that thing is huge!” Gasps Mai in shock. Temporarily ignoring the outburst and trusting Mai to inform us of any immediate threat I focus on gathering supplies.
“Noah, could you grab flashlights, Ava batteries and Ella paper and pen?” I asked before Noah calls downstairs to make sure Sam was ok, it was his rotation on the sofa bed so he was slightly separated from the rest of us. “I will grab some rope, Mai what's going on outside?” I ask as I head towards the stash of climbing gear piled up in my room. While it wasn't the most efficient it did free up a lot of space in our inventories.
“I’m guessing it's the Sky lurker things and it is massive, like the biggest thing I've seen, almost as big as Ava’s ti…” Mia starts but is interrupted by Ava's indignant cry. “Anyway, it's a massive jellyfish-looking thing high up in the sky with long ass tentacles…Oh shit there they are fast, ones at the window.” Before she can continue she is interrupted by a panicked yell from downstairs.
Rushing back to the landing I quickly vault over the bannister and fall to the ground floor, rolling slightly to lessen the fall. I jump up and run to the living room through the side door to see Sam with a slightly transparent blue and white tentacle that looks to be made of melted glass. He is holding his javelin ready to fend off the tentacle that crept through the open window. Behind him is a large hole that has formed in the dining room.
“What the hell is that thing?!?” He yells out in a panic, waving his javelin around to try and dissuade it from advancing. Sadly this causes the weapon to get stuck on the ceiling light as the transparent appendage slowly sways side to side getting ever closer. “Sky lurker’s tentacle,” I answer, drawing my knife and slowly edging closer.
If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.
After spending the last week fighting the undead and mutant animals I had become slightly more adept at combat but something about the tentacle's movements struck me as odd. It swayed hesitantly through the room, randomly darting around in a seemingly random direction. ‘Is it blind? Well it's basically a fancy arm, you wouldn't have eyes on an arm? But then how did it find the open window?’
Before I can voice my query it lashes out in a sudden burst of movement, colliding with Sam's javelin just as he got it untangled from the lights. At the exact moment of contact arcs of electricity sprout from the appendage, travelling down its length, through the javelin and into an unsuspecting Sam. Electricity flows into Sam making him seize up as his body gives off micro spasms, his eyes and muscles twitching uncontrollably.
“Fuck” I rush into the room towards the Javelin to separate Sam from the conductor connecting him to the alien limb.
Sam is being pulled towards the window of the living room at a rapid pace but I should be able to intercept them. Activating my ability to liquefy and channelling it to my right hand I manage to slam my hand down onto the electrified javelin. For a moment my body locks into place, my muscles tensing as a high voltage of electrical power courses through my flesh and blood. But then the javelin melts, effectively cutting it in half, and freeing us.
Gasping for breath I sag slightly and look towards the tentacle, watching it jolt from the sudden loss of weight before stopping in its tracks and dropping the partially melted javelin. I shake slightly to remove the numbness in my body and begin to remove a wooden club from my inventory when the tentacle once again darts forward like a cobra juiced up with lightning, hell-bent on killing its prey. Which given its trajectory, would have been Sam if I didn't manage to spartan kick him out of the way, causing him to fall through the sofa bed and onto the floor in a tangled pile of blankets and pillows.
‘Sorry Sam!’
I planned on dropping to the floor myself until I could have gotten a suitable weapon, but the tentacle lashes out upon not finding its prey and catches onto my extended and unprotected leg. ‘Double Fuck’ Once again I lose control of my body, feeling as though lighting has replaced my blood and concrete fills my body.
As fast as thought, the appendage coils and snakes around my leg before dragging me towards the window. Out of the corner of my eye, I can see Noah and Sam rushing to grab me and pull me back to safety but I know they won't make it in time. I try to convey that it's ok and that they shouldn't beat themselves up about the giant tentacle monster taking advantage of me but I highly doubt they can read my mind, or if they would want to be in my mind in the first place.
Shattering glass soon fills my vision, sparkling like snowflakes as it scraps against my face and gets lost in my hair. While I am sure it would hurt like pissing vinegar I can't actually feel anything other than my nerves being held hostage by electricity. My mind blinks in and out of consciousness as I am dragged out through the window and up into the sky above where I see the true body of the Sky Lurkers. ‘Big…Triple…Fuck.’
While I would normally relish the feeling of flying with the absolute freedom it promised and the earth slowly shrinking away I was currently preoccupied with the giant ass JellyFish wannabes floating in the sky. Each Sky Lurker was the size of a small cruise ship and looked to be made from liquid glass that pulsed with a bright blue light that danced across their enormous frames. Thousands of tentacles swam across the sky crackling with arcs of lightning and swarmed across the streets and parks picking up victims that were brought up to the main body’s gaping mouth that glowed with an eerie dull light.
From my new enforced vantage point, I could barely see the houses below but I could see tens if not hundreds of Sky Lurkers each with thousands of tentacles lit up by arks of lighting. Even if I was about to be eaten and possibly die I still can't help but find it beautiful.
Fragmented thoughts struggle to form from a sporadic electrocuted mind as I’m brought up to the mouth of the enormous beast. Admiration for the beauty and wonder of the new world, rage at the thought of my life ending before I can experience it and a burning desire to complete the challenge and live. With an internal smile, I begin to come up with a plan to kill the sky-bound Leviathan.
[One of the 7 has died. There are 6/7 left within the show]
Fills my mind as I am shoved unceremoniously up and down the creature's smooth rubbery gullet. Once inside the flying monster tentacle finally lets go of my leg allowing blessed relief from the constant electric shock therapy. “So one of the 7 is dead? That's not a good sign for the state of the world” I say like I’m not about to be digested by a high-budget Japanese porno monster.
Without resisting I allow myself to slide down the rubbery surface and deeper into the transparent flesh tunnels. I once heard that a child could crawl around inside the arteries of a blue whale without much issue, excluding the morality and possible psychological effect of the child of course. I continue to slide as acid begins to secrete from the walls of flesh and melt into my skin.
Blue whales are approximately 30 M long while this little beasty was about 500 M in diameter and 200 M tall. The acid was melting my amour and burning my flesh but I just gritted my teeth and held on. While 99% of the creature I was currently inhabiting was transparent you could still make out vague shapes of organs, veins and the big ass pool of acid I was currently sliding towards.
Another interesting factoid was that flesh and blood have no substance within the spirit realm so you can't physically interact with living entities. So when I finally managed to divert my slippery path to be over a partially large organic tube-looking structure I quickly blink into the spirit realm. Being so high up and no longer being held up by the sky lurker I begin to fall within the red tinted pain infused realm.
If I continued like this then I would fall to my death in a rather anticlimactic splat, or get my soul torn out by the wraiths that I have learned call this reality home. So in a grand stroke of genius, I chose not to fall to my death and reappeared within the physical realm. Only this time I was at a slightly lower altitude within the Sky lurkers artery submerged in a clear oily substance I assume to be something akin to blood which luckily dilutes the acid that until that point was tearing apart my amour and flesh.
I sigh in relief and relax slightly now that I was out of immediate danger and my face was no longer melting off. ‘Turns out acid hurts, who knew? Anyway, step two is complete. Now the next question is, how does one kill a Sky lurker from the inside?’
After floating around for a few minutes I have come to a few conclusions, one being that breathing and eating the blood of a 500 M sky-bound leviathan was an odd experience as it felt as if I was drowning in oil and yet I was perfectly fine.
Another conclusion was that even after 10 minutes of thinking and floating I had still not found a way to cause any serious harm. Its rubbery flesh is incredibly elastic which made all my attempts at stabbing, cutting, and punching useless.
The creature was big enough that poisoning its bloodstream with the crap from my inventory would take days to kill it, if it even harmed it. The Artery was also too big to block off which led me to my current course of action, giving it an internal hickey. With my improved lungs, I could produce an impressive amount of suction which I was using to stretch out the flesh as much as possible and saw at it with a hacksaw from my inventory.
‘This is so fucking dumb and most definitely not the blood-pumping fight I had envisioned’ I finish cutting out the basketball-sized hole and watch the blood flow into the monster's internals. ‘This is going to take forever.’ I groan before getting to work, biting and sawing everything I could get my mouth on. Luckily it was far easier to tear the elastic flesh once it had a hole in it which made my life so much easier as it allowed me to rip the artery in two causing it to flail around like an unattended hose pipe.
Smirking as I fall onto transparent elastic organs I once again got to work but now I could crawl around the creature's internal organs like an enormous soft play, just with more blood and violence. Or maybe less, depending on how psychotic the kids were. With an evil cackle, I crawl and slip around like a madman, biting and cutting everything in sight.
After another 10 Minutes of roleplaying as a parasite, the Sky lucker began to shake. 20 minutes later large amounts of electricity is blasted everywhere but the rubbery flesh acts as an insulator and the effects are mild. 40 minutes in and I weaken the stomach enough that acid is now spilling into the internal organs. 60 minutes in and I successfully cut some kind of smaller organ in half, causing the beast to yet again shoot lightning through its own body. 70 Minutes in I notice that a lot of the holes I have made have healed but I am still hurting it faster than it heals, despite the near-constant electrocution.
More time passes and the only thing keeping me going is my enhanced stamina regeneration and very mild healing factor due to everything I consume being converted into what my body needs and processed at high speeds. Despite this I was mentally exhausted, bloated, sore everywhere, covered in blood, dripping with acid and constantly being electrocuted.
The constant pain and stamina pumping through my veins was doing nothing to help my mental state as it ranged from exhausted to hyperactive faster than a bipolar hamster. Normally I would not be able to keep such a pace for this long and the only thing I think of that is allowing me to do so would be the fact that I am eating a clearly incredibly powerful creature. ‘Slash, bite, cut, rip and tear lah lah lah, I am losing my FUCKING MIND LOOK AT ME GO I CANT BE STOPPED!!! I wonder if the higher quality meat is affecting my consumption abilities? When will this thing FUCKING DIE?!?!?!?!? I am losing my mind. It's like sleep deprivation but you’ve just downed a litre of coffee. Ooooo what is that?’ I've climbed, cut and wiggled my way far enough up the monster that I could see something that didn't look to be made of melted glass.
Falling face first yet again due to the beast's trembling I crawl my way towards a large jagged white and blue crystal suspended within yet another car-sized organ. “How many organs does this thing need?!?!?!? I’ve cut through FUCKING HUNDREDS!” While a slight exaggeration I didn't give a flying fuck. Giving a deep sigh I started my long slippery journey through the shaking terrain, only face-planting four more times. “If this is another hallucination then I am going to be soooooo pissed!!!” I latch onto the new organ like an oversized tick and begin the process of cutting it open like a pinata.
Saw teeth rub against my bloodied lips as the Sky lucker begins to shake violently, lighting sparks everywhere. ‘This one must be important.’ I think with glee unbefitting of my aching body that is currently flying away from the crystal’s container due to the shaking. Landing in a heap I rush towards the organ again with a newfound vigour.
I almost cut my face open countless times with my saw but I manage to finally cut through the organ’s protective layer and reach my hand within the thick gooey substance. But the moment I do the shaking and lighting stop, the Sky lucker goes limp and starts falling.
“Hahahahaha fucking finally!!!” I yell in delight. “Now I just need to fall several miles without dying…Piece of cake!” With the beast finally dead I could finally manipulate the matter around me so without further ado I pull myself into what I now suspect to be the brain and seal it shut behind me. Doing this in free fall was difficult but I eventually pulled myself into the brain and put the crystal in my inventory to inspect later.
Free falling has always been enjoyable to me although there is usually something tried and tested stopping me from becoming a pancake and not a giant jellyfish corpse with elastic skin that I hope will absorb most of the impact. So for the next 90 seconds or so I smile slightly as I plummet back towards earth. ‘Apart from the whole killing my parents' thing, this last week has been the first time I have truly felt alive.’ Then the impact hits, my stomach churns, my bones creak and my vision blurs.
Then the corpse bounces, and we lift back up into the air only to free fall again although for a significantly less distance. I bounce three more times before the corpse finally stops in the nature reserve, crushing trees and flatting wildlife from its fall.
With a grunt, I slowly melt my way out of the corpse and into the nature reserve. “That was great, we should do that again.” I give the corpse a light pat as I stagger onto solid ground for what feels like the first time in days. It was a similar feeling to spending hours on a treadmill only to suddenly get off onto the unmoving ground.
Looking up through the broken canopy I can see the sun in the sky and estimate it to be around 6 in the morning, with a sigh and a brief stretch I begin to look around for landmarks so I could find my way back home before another Sky lucker decided to grace me with its presence.
“Now… Where the fuck am I?” I ask without expecting a reply as I spin around in a slow circle to look around at the broken yet still overgrown forest before stopping when I spot a pack of undead that were apparently not afraid of death jellyfish falling from the sky. “Good human corpses that definitely don't want to eat me?” I say in a friendly voice reserved for when talking to dogs or babies.
They growl. I sigh. “Great, now I have to fight my way back home.”