CBvsLotU - Chapter 68: Mistaken Reality (Patreon)

Chapter Sixty-Eight: Mistaken Reality

Domino had gotten used to her life being a strange myriad of being tossed into one batshit insane situation after the next. Her innate luck powers tended to keep her more or less intact, but that didn’t mean they kept her safe. Her current predicament was a prime example of that. On top of being very confused about how she’d even wound up in the Necropolis, Domino had received a clear sign from the very beginning that the new world was a hostile one. Still, her luck had blessed her with finding Alice and her ragtag group of scouts. As she’d been caught up on the situation as they knew it – lamenting the fact that despite their prolonged stay in the Necropolis, they still knew very little about why the place was the way it was or how they’d wound up there – she rationally acknowledged that heading back into the monster-infested city was probably a terrible idea. But her gut said it was the right thing to do, that staying with the group of survivors was the best course of action. And Domino always trusted her gut.

Which is why, when a tickle at the back of her brain encouraged her to ask Fuuka to use her abilities to scan ahead of them, she didn’t hesitate to voice her concerns.

Fuuka gave her a confused look. “This is the way we came,” she explained. “The monsters migrate pretty regularly, but we were just here and it was all clear.”

“Look, I may not be able to literally sense danger, but my feelings usually wind up being right,” Domino shot back, looking to Alice. “Look, just humor me on this one, okay? If I’m wrong, next dark hole we have to crawl through, I’ll go first.”

Alice shrugged. “Not gonna turn down a volunteer for taking point,” she said, looking to Fuuka. “Go ahead and scan.”

A little offended that her opinion wasn’t being given the trust she thought it disturbed, Fuuka reached out with her psychic feelers. She felt nothing at first, but she kept scanning, determined to do a thorough job so that when she turned to the grey-skinned woman she could proclaim ‘I told you so’ with supreme confidence. Fuuka’s bottom lip curled into a frown as she reached a little further down their path and felt something. It felt unlike any of the other monsters she’d detected previously, but it was definitely not friendly. “She’s right,” Fuuka admitted, not without a degree of annoyance. “There’s something waiting down there. Not sure what.”

“Good catch,” Alice told Domino. “Looks like you might be our good luck charm. Let’s find a way around it. I’d like to avoid getting into a fight, if we can help it. Fuuka, keep scanning. Let me know if you sense anything else, or our mystery guest starts moving. Everyone else, stay sharp.”

***

The journey from her home universe into the Necropolis did not affect Art3mis as strongly as it had previous victims. It helped that she was not only already experienced in living her life in a fictional reality, but that she’d been in the midst of exploring that fictional reality when she’d been taken. The world she’d been ported into looked nothing like any of the in-game cities she’d been too before, but she had no doubt that it was some new construct from James Halliday’s mind. Perhaps she’d bugged something out and found her way into an early access area. The place certainly looked desolate enough. A horror land, huh? That’s pretty cool, she thought. But he’s gonna have to do a whole lot better than this to scare me away from the Key Trials.

Art3mis had no clue that the world she was in was very much real and possessed a danger far greater than any she’d faced in OASIS. As her body had been plucked out of her reality, she’d been augmented and shifted to take on the visage of her in-game avatar, further pushing the narrative in her mind that she was still just in the game she’d enjoyed playing so much. That alone was enough to bolster her with confidence and bravery in spite of the strangeness surrounding her. If it’s early access, she thought. It doesn’t look like any NPCs or MOBs have been programmed in yet. But maybe there’s still loot around. Looks like it’s time for Art3mis to snag herself some fancy rares. The building she chose to start her loot hunt was at pure random, but it showed that she did not possess the same innate luck that Domino did, as the building was home to the very thing the mutant woman had gotten a bad feeling about.

The building looked like it had been a storage center before suffering some extensive fire damage. Art3mis disregarded the damage, attributing it to a mere cosmetic choice and not an indication that something violent had transpired there at a previous point. She could dig into the lore once the area was officially released. For now, she wanted the goodies. Moving past the destroyed front desk, Art3mis entered a long, narrow hall. It was pretty dark, but she could see a light at the opposite end of the hall, leading back outside. Based on the destruction lining the hall, it almost looked like some other group had already passed through it, securing the location as a hidden passage between two blocks. The only thing that didn’t line up with that notion was the large, slug-shaped mass of flesh about midway down the hall, practically blocking the way.

Looks like maybe I was wrong about no MOBs being spawned in, the red-skinned gamer girl thought, easily recognizing the giant slug as a threat. But it didn’t seem to be moving, leading her to believe that it was only a placeholder model. She didn’t have any interest in climbing over the thing to check the storage lockers behind it – it looked gooey as fuck – but she could easily clear the lockers in front of it. With her thoughts returned to all of the potential loot she could find ahead of every other OASIS player, Art3mis started her search, ducking into the first locker on the right. She didn’t find much beyond a stash of Christmas decorations, a milk crate full of old records – the vinyl kind, not the paper kind, and some clothes. For the most part, the clothes looked like generic cosmetic accessories, but she did find a pair of boots she liked. She got a crucial hint that she was no longer in the game after she replaced her footwear and realized she couldn’t store her old boots in her inventory. Art3mis passed it off as a bug, a by-product of glitching into the new area before it had been released, and left her old boots behind, confident that they’d respawn back in her inventory once she got back into the over world.

If not, I am so sending a ticket, she thought, crossing the hall to check the second locker, not even bothering to glance at the fleshy slug.

When Art3mis had stepped into the hall for the first time and observed the Fusion Slug, the Fusion Slug had observed her in return. She’d not noticed the way its thick eye stalks had swiveled to fix on her position, getting a general sense of her body and her distance from it. The creature’s bulbous body was a blend of light and dark browns, soaked in a thick gelatinous mucus. Its form was less solid than it appeared, capable of absorbing solid nutrients directly through its skin. It had found the passage through the storage center and had slithered into it, small brain recognizing that it was a prime position to capture prey. With no real means of defending itself, the Fusion Slug relied on other means of subterfuge to trap its victims. Each time Art3mis left the hall, the gooey monster moved with shocking speed, creeping forward down the hall a foot or so at a time. Each time she stepped back into the hall, the slug froze. The fact that she was largely ignoring the creature helped to keep her oblivious to its slow but steady approach.

Art3mis’s frustration was growing by the fifth locker. The place, so far, had been largely a bust. It was just the typical kind of dusty junk she’d have expected to find in a real storage center. Unused exercise machines and broken televisions and – holy shit – so many Christmas decorations. She was beginning to think that the whole area was so early access that nothing beyond a general framework, some base models, and a slew of garbage props had been all that had been designed into it so far. Still, she was determined to take full advantage of the glitch, to find something that she could take back and show off to her fellow gamers, really brag about her l33tness. Stepping out of another worthless locker, Art3mis turned to move further down the hall and nearly walked right into the Fusion Slug.

With the exaggerated features of her avatar, Art3mis’s look of surprise was comical. She let out a startled shriek, stumbling back a step. She was ashamed to admit just how much the thing had scared her, certain that it had been further down the hall when she’d first spotted it. Realization barely took hold before the slug launched itself towards her, rising up and curling the edges of its wide, flat foot around her. Art3mis let out a scream, managed to turn, taking only a single step back down the hall before the Fusion Slug dropped its considerable bulk onto her back. She collapsed beneath it, mashed hard into the ground as the thing’s goo soaked into her. She felt the cheeks of her ass and the curve of her back sink into the slug’s underside, its body forming against her as it secured a firm hold. As it reared up a second time, Art3mis found enough air to let out a second scream, arms and legs straining to pull free from the sticky mucus.

The caustic enzymes in the slug’s mucus ate away at Art3mis’s clothing. The half-dissolved fabric sloshed away from her squirming body, exposing nearly every inch of her pale-red skin. Her small breasts heaved, nipples rigid from the terror of what was happening to her. She cried out as her legs and arms bent backwards, slurped through the slug’s porous flesh and into the healthy supply of even more destructive fluids within it. Her oversized eyes bulged, howls of pain rocketing up her throat as she realized – finally – that she was not in some early access section of OASIS. She’d felt enough digital pain in the game to know the difference between the artificial construct and the real thing. Somehow, wherever she was, whatever had been done to change her body, it was all real. Her bravery and confidence were gone in an instant, sobbing pathetically as her pilfered boots melted away around her wiggling toes, followed shortly after by the toes themselves.

With its prey thoroughly snared and the absorption process started, the Fusion Slug proceeded to engage its unique form of breeding. The creature was a single-gendered organism, containing a highly adaptive seed to propagate its species. But there was no such thing as a Lady Fusion Slug. The creatures required a mate of a separate species to reproduce, using their uterus for its own purpose. Expanding its sides outwards to press against the sides of the hall and brace itself, the Fusion Slug extended its mating tendril. The slimy length slithered up the insides of Art3mis’s thighs and pushed its way into her hot cunt. The girl’s screams were unceasing and rising towards madness as she was violated deeply by the slug’s mating tool.

The burning agony of her limbs dissolving within the Fusion Slug was unlike anything Art3mis had experienced before. She heaved in air through her clenched teeth and let it out as fresh screams, hopelessly trapped as the creature raped her. She could feel the slime oozing through her short red hair, tickling her scalp. Fresh terror spiked through her, realizing that her head was being tugged back, into the terrible monster. The slippery lips of the slug’s parting skin crept over the top of Art3mis’s forehead and across her cheeks. She managed one last scream as the mating tendril pierced her cervix and invaded her uterus. The volume of the scream became muted as her head was slurped into the slug’s body, skin lips closing around her slender neck.

Only Art3mis’s torso was left protruding from the slug, limbs already eaten away and the stumps fused to its body. Her torso wiggled with agonized fear, perky tits jumping and jiggling as her stomach muscles clenched up. The muffled howling coming from her absorbed head became a wet series of gurgles as the destructive goo within the creature continued to break her down. Art3mis’s final moments of life were filled with a pure pain, a cruel and constant notice that she’d been incredibly wrong about where she’d been taken. Her eyes popped and her tongue swirled down the back of her throat, followed by the sizzling remnants of a few teeth. Her torso entered into a spastic shuddering as her brain dissolved, moments before her softened skull caved in on itself. The skin of her neck, irritated to a brighter shade of red by the digestive burning she was suffering through, became one with the slug’s skin lips. As her head finished wasting away into a nutritious slop for the Fusion Slug to absorb, the girl became a vestigial growth along the underside of the creature serving only a single reproductive purpose.

Art3mis’s headless, limbless torso sank a bit further into the slug’s underside, but not so deep to vanish completely. The mating tendril pumped into her dead snatch, the tip ticking along the walls of her uterus as it neared its release. The slime oozed into her flesh through her back, breaking down her bones and unnecessary organs. Her remaining skin flattened out across the slug’s massive foot, leaving behind only the vague protrusions of her breasts and the much more significant protrusion of her uterus as it was filled with the Fusion Slug’s potent, non-discriminatory seed.  The creature eased back down, concealing all evidence of its latest victim. It would keep the impregnated womb hidden and safe while the gestation of a new life took place. When the new Fusion Slug was ready to be born, it would rise up again, expelling Art3mis’s stolen womb so that it could hatch.

***

Alice and the others successfully circumvented any chance of encountering the Fusion Slug, blissfully unaware at how easy it would have been for them to handle the creature, or how their deviation in path had led to Art3mis’s terrible fate. The deviation did mean they were dealing with a route that wasn’t nearly as well scouted or cleared out. Further choices had to be made to determine the best course of action. Domino suggested, largely on a whim, that they continue to use the city’s smaller streets to make their way back to the Bunker. Fuuka, even more committed to scanning their path for potential threats, countered – maybe just a little too smugly – that she could sense something else on the streets. She wasn’t sure exactly what it was, just that it felt ‘squiggly’ and reminded her on some level of the Helliphants. Renamon pointed out that they could use the highway as a viable route, citing the height advantage it would give them over potential threats lurking through the streets. It wasn’t a terrible idea, considering the highway was the most direct path towards the Bunker. Still, there wasn’t much in the way of cover up there. Homura voiced her vote that they take advantage of the most direct path, but Alice wasn’t so easily swayed.

It had been obvious that Fuuka’s ego had taken a hit when Domino had proved her wrong, but Alice doubted the girl would make up a threat just to get back at her. Still, Domino’s instincts seemed to be scary good. An unknown threat we know about, or the potential threat of something we don’t know anything about, she pondered. What the hell’s the best option?