Debauchery Hunter 1 (Patreon)

Debauchery Hunter
Chapter 1

-VB-

I grunted while opening a portal with my version of the Doormaker.

The Golden Morning was over, and there was nothing else for me here in Earth Bet or its sister worlds. I also knew that I had to leave quickly. Holding a Mover rating that put me on top of all Movers made me a juicy target to acquire. I was not interested in that at all.

So I just opened a portal to somewhere that was more amenable than Earth Bet.

Hell, I didn’t even think about going to a world that was wack. I needed somewhere safe, easy, and quiet for me to think about my future.

Why not a place like Remn-. No, no, no, that place was another death world. I needed peace and quiet, not a campaign of evil extermination, although I’m sure there were people who would make a campaign of death and destruction some form of meditative thing; it just wasn’t for me right now as I was.

How about … uh … Mass Effect?

… I mean, most of Mass Effect was a pretty calm place. All I had to do was avoid the Citadel, Eden Prime, all of Batarian Hegemony, and all of the -. Whatever. There were a lot of places I had to avoid but there were a lot of places that I could also hole up in. Too many places I had to avoid.

Ugh, why was I not going to some medieval world? I could just buy some modern equipment like generators, light bulbs, and wiring, and then set them up wherever I holed up.

Besides, who’s going to look for me in a medieval world?

Certainly not the capes who were too used to the idea of a cape hiding in a city.

All I knew about - like truly understood and knew about, not the superficial “Oh, I read a wikia page about this planet so I must know it” knew - was Earth, so … I guessed that that’s where I’m going.

Carrying a bag with the bare necessities over my shoulder, I opened a grey-rimmed rectangular portal with but a mental flick. The portal crackled as it tore its way into two realities, the one I was in and my destination, and then paused.

I took a look behind, grimaced at the nearly destroyed state that the Big Apple was in, and then left for good.

I wrote a lot of stories about being on Earth Bet and you know what? I’m actually happy about not being there anymore. Maybe it was the fact that I spent the first month of my new superpower life on Earth Bet fighting a literal god and nearly died far too many times.

Yes, it was definitely because of that and not because the shit ton of no longer contained horrors freely roaming the apocalypse of a world that was the current Earth Bet. The Machine Army, in particular, scared me. It scared everyone, so no, I was not a coward; I was being smart.

-VB-

"I dub thee 'Earth Malachite,'" I declared authoritatively with the loudest booming voice I could muster and a stern face that almost glared out into the world.

I now stood at the base of what was this world's version of Switzerland.

Well, there was no Switzerland or its predecessors yet. I did ask the Doormaker to bring me to an alternate medieval Europe because I was very familiar with its history and geography. I lacked a lot of information.

I chose the Alps because it was the safer(?) option among many others. Po Valley saw a lot of battles. Iberian peninsula saw a lot of battles. All of Western and Central Europe saw a lot of battles. Eastern Europe was destined for Mongol invasion. Northern Europe snowed constantly. Southern Europe was a pirate haven when it wasn’t the playground of the powerful.

I don't wanna be anywhere near the Balkans.

The Alps was also an ideal location for my abilities. Doormaker negated travel issues common in mountains, my Gamer of Rust told me that it could show me where ores were, Jack of All Trades could only be benefitted and benefit from Gamer of Rust, and Hive Mind got me manpower so I didn't need to depend on other people.

Cherish the power and Self-Biokinesis were more personal stuff.

Now, I found myself in a nice little valley. There was a large forest all around me, a lake at the bottom of the valley, and a bunch of mountains.

Honestly, I felt a little hyped.

I was about to build my own slice of heaven, and no one in medieval Europe can stop me!

First thing first, I needed to set up a base.

I pulled out a hatchet I'd nicked from one of the stores of the dead New York City and hurried over to the nearby forest. Trees fell, wood entered my inventory without having to pick up lumber.

Within an hour, I had half an inventory filled with wood. A minute after that, I had a blue building planner and a wooden mallet.

It was time to build myself a little fort!

As I started the construction of the tower that would be the center of my fort, I learned something new after setting down a Tool Cupboard, a deployable item from Rust game that was central to how a player managed their base and saw its maintenance upkeep. Upkeep was basically none compared to the game.

In-game, Rust forced players to harvest resources to pay upkeep to their base lest it starts to decay. The larger the base, exponentially more resources the owner had to gather. My Gamer version of Rust had that function, but it was not ridiculous like the game.

Hell, I didn't even need to have a hundredth of the upkeep cost to keep my base from decaying!

After storing all of the wood away, I went back out, this time to find some stones worthy of being used for construction. As I scoured the land for stone that was big enough and could fit into my Inventory, I also memorized the environment that I found myself in.

This valley rose up towards the east and down towards the west, which was where the aforementioned lake was. It was also clear to me that this place was so far rarely touched by humanity. There were no ruins, fallow fields, or even a rudimentary packed dirt road-.

I stopped when I saw a narrow if well made cobblestone Roman road near the lake.

“Nevermind,” I muttered to myself. “I’m not as isolated as I think myself to be.”

It was all the more reason to complete my base, secure it, Door myself to worlds that had Scrap Metals (a critical resource in technological advancements for my version of the Gamer), and fortify the area.

Geez, I had a lot of work to do.

… Oh right. I had Hive Mind.

And then there were two of me. Odd feeling, that, being in a gestalt consciousness.

-VB-

To find Scrap, a material needed in Rust to create components that were used for everything, I opened a Door to Lotho Minor, a junkyard planet in the Star Wars universe. As it was expected of a planet no one cared about, there were a lot of environmental hazards there from sulfuric rain to absolutely disgusting creatures lurking in between the mounds of trash. I got two stacks of Scraps and a bunch of components, and then booked it before any of the lurking creatures found me.

Another new thing I learned about my powers was that instead of scrounging for boulders and rocks of right sizes, I could dig into the mountain, chunk out stones into sizes I liked, and it would be considered to be Stone, a resource of Rust, by my Gamer.

Having no need to sleep thanks to Rust Gamer, I completed my base within two days. It stood out like a sore thumb because of its rust red walls in a forest of green and because of its cubic three foundation by three foundation by three floor shape, but it was home.

I loved it. It was my baby. Yeah, it wasn’t optimal, but I wasn’t fighting other Rust players now, was I? Sure, it was cold as hell during the night so I had to wear thick fur clothes I made from fur I skinned from a few deers I killed. I didn’t have a proper bed - sleeping only in a sleeping bag - because I used all Scrap on learning how to make guns and other fortifications and I was not in favor of returning to the monster-infested and sulfuric acid-raining world of Lotho Minor, which was admittedly filled to the brim with components, scraps, and other materials I could harvest far more easily than other places, until I had some proper gear and medical tools.

(Was it stupid of me to learn the Semi-Automatic Rifle before I learned Medical Syringe? I think so.)

However, it was perhaps for the best that I researched guns and fortifications first, because I had my first encounter with the locals on my third day there.

The original me (OM) and C1 were out in the field harvesting more wood to fuel the furnaces inside the base while the latest clone to join me, C2, cooked metal ores I’d harvested from an iron ore vein I found (but once harvested, the ore just became “metal ore”) and organized inventory inside the base.

Fun fact: each clone had Rust inventory, but Rust inventory was not exactly endless or even large.

“Wer lebt hier?!”

The sudden outburst of noise - people speaking! - confused all three of us before we realized that people were outside our base!

C2 quickly ran up to the third story window where all of the open windows were armored with Metal Vertical Embrasure.

Thirty or so armed people, dressed in dirty linen and leather, stood outside our base.

…

W-Were these bandits?

Were we being attacked by bandits?

-VB-

A/N: Actual location is the Reschensee lake in South Tyrol and the valley immediately east of the lake. It is part of the greater Duchy of Bavaria and is under the rule of the Holy Roman Empire.

A/N 2: This world is the world of Vinland Saga, which puts the start of this story on this Earth’s 1013 AD. Sweyn Forkbeard, King Sweyn in the manga, is currently the king.

A/N 3: the change in speech pattern from first POV to second POV is intentional.

A/N 4: This is my first published Post-GM Worm story. Huh. No Taylor, No Lisa. I suppose I'll have to settle with the rest of the universe.