Master of Flesh 2 (Patreon)

Master of Flesh 2

-VB-

82 BBY
2 days after “Master of Flesh 1”

It’s been two days now since I’ve been dropped into this hell hole.

And I meant when I said this place was a hell hole. Dangers lurked everywhere, darkness pervaded everywhere, and the whole place stunk about as bad as skunk sprays. On top of these three major excesses, I had to fight four more times to survive.

In the process, I also created six more of my bastardized zerglings, bringing my total guard number to eight. I stopped making more after that because all nine of us needed to eat… even if it meant eating the cooked flesh of the things that lived down here. 

Hell, I was half-tempted to just bum rush a hivemind or something so that I could control an actual zerg swarm to find my way out of this place… but without knowing what was down in this place with me, I might provoke something really bad. It might be overly cautious considering that zergs always won with numbers in the end, but I stuck to it.

It helped that I didn’t know exactly how many of these things lived down here, and that limited how much biomass I could consume. 

“Another intersection,” I grumbled as I stared at the three paths available in front of me.

Intersections were common enough in this place that I wasn’t upset with them anymore. When I first encountered them, I threw a serious non-verbal and rather quiet temper tantrum. Each path led on forever with no end in sight in this darkness. Once I took a path, going back was not only a pain but going back to paths that battles might have taken place. Such places drew in more enemies in the dark with the sound of battle and the smell of spilled blood. 

Each choice was made without the ability to go back, not without risking myself and my new pack.

I hated decisions like that.

But after fifty or so of them, I was tired of being upset with intersections. 

“Let’s go… left.”

And we made our left turn and walked down the cavernous metal tunnels.

As we walked, I noticed something. The walls in the dumpster where I began my journey was dark, stained, and rusted. The walls here weren’t as rusted. It could mean anything from being more recent in construction, better maintained, and more. 

At the very least, I was seeing less and less of the bat-faced humanoid things that kept on attacking me. 

Maybe this was a good thing.

‘I don’t know how long I walked for. I only knew the days because there was some sort of siren that rang at the same time every day, and there had been two such rings so -.’

BRRRRAAAAAAANNNNNNGGGGGGG

I yelped in surprise and then misstepped. I tripped over a jutting edge of a metal panel floor, and tripped. My zerglings were quick to help me up but 

‘- make that three.’

So three days have passed since I ended up in this dump.

Jesus.

… I wanted to get out of here.

-VB-

Another four days later, I saw my first sign of non-hostile sentient interaction.

After another intersection, I found myself in a cave filled with scrap metals. This time, there was light (which was why I chose this direction) and there were people from the top of what appeared to be a scrap metal plateau. From what I saw, they seemed to be gathering more useful scraps while leaving common metals and alloys behind, which formed a giant scrap metal plateau within the cave.

‘How high is the damn ceiling?’ I thought in wonder as I left the tunnel entirely.

The closest of these workers saw my pack of zerglings as I walked out of the tunnel where they had cordoned off with some barricades. When we cleared the barricade easily, he approached us cautiously, stopping at the edge of the scrap metal plateau. And it was an alien.

“... Those are some mangy looking pups ya got there,” the tall alien said to me. “And what the hell are you doing coming from there? Did ya go treasure hunting or something, sonny?”

I blinked at the insectoid alien glaring(?) at me. He wasn’t surprised by my appearance, only the zerglings. Pups, he called them. Were canine family pets normal in this place?

“I … actually don’t know where I am.”

The man(?) blinked. “That don’t sound good.”

“I also woke up without memories of this place?”

“That’s super not good. Where are ya from?”

“A planet called Earth…”

“... Never heard of that one. You must be from the Outer Rim or something. Anyways, did ya find something in those tunnels?”

Right, he did ask me if I had gone treasure hunting. 

“No. Had to fight my way through the bat-faced things…”

“The troggs? You fought troglodytes?”

“Uhh… I guess, yes?”

The alien stared at me with a rather human-like gawk. “You must be a Jedi or something.”

“...I’m sorry, but what’s a Jedi?” 

It was the alien’s turn to be surprised. “You don’t know about Jedi when you are on Coruscant?” he asked but then stopped. “Where are my manners. My name is Shukili Nunim, and I am a scrap recycler like the rest of the folks here.”

“Oh, what city is Coruscant?”

“... I think you might have hit your head hard as you came out of hell, human.”

I didn’t know what to say to that. This was just a new world for me, and I didn’t know anything about this world … so maybe it’s best to just call my situation “amnesia”?

Maybe.

…

I think it’s actually a good idea.

“Maybe. I did wake up with a hurting head.”

He frowned. “Unfortunately, there isn’t a good hospital in the area… I know of a local general physician, but he deals with insectoids like myself, but I can lead you to him anyways.”

“... I’d like that.” If only to know where the nearest point of civilization was.

“Good. Then come up here, then. There’s no path leading out of this underlevel at the bottom of the cave. We have a shaft elevator here… but you’re gonna have to pay the fee to use it like everyone else.”

“...Do you accept scraps?” I asked, pointing to the scraps he stood under.

“If you’re gonna go for small value shit like plasteel, ya better have a lot of it.”

I looked down at my zerglings. I looked back up. “I can probably get enough of it.”

“Suit yourself. Now, I have to go. Got a family to feed and everything, not that I have a wife. Or children.” And then he was gone from the edge of the plateau.

I turned to my zerglings.

I sighed. “I suppose this is far as we go as zerglings, boys and girls.” I gestured for them to gather around.

And I thought of something.

With Nilbog, I could direct what kind of form I want. I already did it to make pseudo-zerglings. Why couldn’t I do that to make something that was perfect for manual labor?

Like a machamp?

ALL ABOARD THE POKEMON TRAIN! TRANSFORM!

…

Sadly, I had enough biomass to make four machamps, all of which looked a little off from what I imagined machamps to be. One of them only had three arms, another had only one pair of arms, and the last two

Also Nilbog gave none of them “special” moves like pokemons had. 

It just gave them super buff bodies, enough strength to lift four times their body weight, and skin tough enough to resist getting cuts from a brush with sharp metals. 

You know, just little things.

“Alright, one of you carries me, and the rest of you get to work! Let’s get out of this literal dump!”

-VB-

To my surprise, it didn’t take long. 

My fakemons were strong enough that they cut huge pieces of “plasteel” and hurled them one chunk at a time. And by chunk, they were each at least half a ton to ton in weight, far more than anyone could carry. 

It was almost industrial in how my fakemons got to work.

After two hours worth of back and forth between what the freelance recyclers called “drop-off” point where a big honcho recycling representative (a furry alien) gave out tickets and pay and the scrap metal caves, they said I paid for myself and all four of my fakemons (though they called them “mutant laborers”) and gave me the tickets to use on the shaft elevators.

You know those elevators they used in mines?

Yeah, it was one of those. 

All five of us, myself included, climbed onto the shaft elevator, and zoom, up we went.

Ten minutes of waiting later, the elevator slowed down and we arrived out of the dark and into the light.

Civilization. Aliens of all kinds, shops with neon signs, smell of proper food, and the sounds of people walking and talking.

I was free from hell.