The Gamer Chapter 1690 – Chase for the Cure 8 – Decay (Patreon)


‘Easy selection there,’ John thought and pressed the button for ‘Must Find…’. He didn’t even feel the need to justify this decision to himself. The Perk mattered less than the level in the Class anyhow. With that unlocked, Velka could grow to level 100, which was going to get her a whole lot safer.

John leaned back and closed his eyes. A nap was well-earned. He was sleeping less these days, only three to four hours a night, catching short breaks where he could. He, Aclysia and Rave had been going from orientation point to orientation point, making their way to the north of the Diseased Knives territory, from where they should be able to find the location of the hole.

His hurry was because of the gradual decline in Fianna’s condition. By now the mercenary required hourly administrations of health potions to prevent her fingers from turning into purple gunk. Delicia and the supporting crew of the Illuminati had discovered several things about the disease, but because it kept adjusting itself to be damaging to the current host specifically, it couldn’t be purged from the system entirely. Not without a biomancer around that had an Innate Ability or just enough raw power to extract it.

Such a biomancer was one of the things he hoped to find in this secret temple. Either that, the beginnings of a cure or a cure outright. For all he knew, the Giant’s Puss could have been destroyed by something as simple as soaking one’s toes in hot water infused with peppermint leaves. Common wisdoms of a civilization like that were rarely written down.

The fact that the disease had not been a factor for the Spaniards made John think one of two things were true. Either the disease was a deliberate effort from someone from the very start, either the people in charge or people messing with the people in charge, or they had actually found a cure but it was too late. The disease surfacing again with one of the god-warriors seemingly spreading it pointed intensely to the former.

Then again, both could also be true at once.

‘Pleasant thoughts,’ John thought and was about to drift off when he heard the last thing he wanted to hear.

Someone in the plane was coughing.

His eyes flew open. Pushing himself out of his chair, he dashed towards the door. Other people in the plane were similarly in motion. Everyone was making their way to the bathroom. Rave pushed the door open. John was right behind her.

“Why do you all have such sharp ears?” Lee lamented, bowed over the sink.

John glared at the stains on the porcelain. Little blotches of purple that mixed with all of the usual, unappetizing stuff that a bad cold produced. The Gamer grabbed Lee’s hand. Her fingertips were cold. He felt up her head next. No notably raised temperature there.

“It just started,” Lee told him. “Had a scratchy throat since this morning, hoped I just drank too little water.” She gestured at the sink. “Obviously not.”

John circled his jaw. Delicia had initially said Lee’s body was fending off the disease. If it was slowly getting adjusted to work even through her system, then this thing was even worse than they thought. Either that or John had unwittingly carried some stronger pathogens back from the Mummy Lord temples.

In either case, they were now on an even more important timer. Fianna was interesting but ultimately expendable to John. He would not sacrifice her unnecessarily, but he would not give his all for her either. Now that Lee was infected, the possibility of this spreading further to Rave and himself existed and that meant they needed this cure now more than ever.

“Undine, you keep her healthy. We can’t send her to the sick camp. Jane, Aclysia, we are heading back.” The slime lady flowed over, while the trio headed for the exit.

Sleep was more a suggestion for people like them.

____________________________________________________________________________

John had not slept in four days.

It was the longest continuous time he had been awake with his main body since the Court Dust situations. Despite that, he felt all around fine. More irritable, certainly, but all around fine. Whether that short fuse came from the lack of sleep alone was doubtful. He had a lot on his plate at the moment.

Over in the east, explorations were continuing slowly. Clashes with ants always accompanied any successful find of a temple. What goal these ants followed, John hadn’t been able to work out, only that they also worked to spread the disease. In the west, they continued their exploration. Once they left the main territory of the Diseased Knives, things got a lot more difficult.

All the while, conditions worsened. Lee was developing symptoms at a much diminished rate, but her symptoms were developing. Hailey was also showing first signs. Fianna had reached a state where the only reason they hadn’t amputated her hands yet was a sliver of hope and the question of where to place the cut. Several of the Illuminati’s support staff had already succumbed. In the end, most of their bodies, including the bones, had turned into a purple disease jelly.

Rave had not displayed any symptoms yet and neither had Scarlett or Lorelei, who stayed in touch via Harem Comms. From what she told John, the Grim Reaper was directing his forces south-east. At least they would stay out of each other’s way then.

A sudden ‘resistance’ at the edge of his consciousness made John perk up. “Jane, wake up,” he said.

The sleeping Lightbearer stirred. Aclysia was carrying her on her back, where she took advantage of her feline ability to take power naps. If the Gamer had the same ability, he would have used it. “We got a clue?”

“I am feeling a barrier up ahead. Someone powerful is inside, but my senses tell me I would still be in control of it,” he informed her.

“Alright,” Rave glided off Aclysia’s back and stretched, “let’s make an impact.”

They advanced through the pitch black jungle. Various animals cried in protest when they disturbed their resting place. At least animals had an instinctive sense of magic in the way that mundane people of the modern age did not. They knew to stay away.


‘So, the cure is the same as the axolotl that devoured the plague?’ John asked himself.

The question surfaced was put to the back of his head by the presence of a camp of the Illuminati. People were sleeping, for the most part, but a number of augmented humans stayed guard, standing on top of their rolling houses. Several lights were aimed in John’s direction. “We must inform you, John Newman, that we found this place first!” a loudspeaker announced Norahnon’s presence. “We will continue to explore, so please turn your attention elsewhe-“

One of the lights turned into a streak of glass and metal when an Arc Lance punched clean through it. “I am not having this right now,” he said calmly. “Aclysia, go inform them of the circumstances. I am not leaving this up to them alone. I am going into the temple. They can assist me or stay out of my way.”

Said temple was tiny, even smaller than the one they had found the first Mummy Lord in, barely more than a shack with Aztec aesthetics. Under his feet, John felt the presence of a complex, however. The packaging belied the content.

“At once, Master,” the dragon maid stated, then darted off, breaking through the defence perimeter of the adversarial archaeologists’ camp.  

John and Rave broke out into their own sprint, outmanoeuvring the augmented humans that were attempting to get in their way. Short of the tape that surrounded the entrance, they were intercepted.

Lightning crackled around the mechanical limbs of Malady. The white-haired assistant of Norahnon vibrated where she stood, leaving a blur of afterimages in the vicinity of her skin. “Your access has not been authorized,” she stated. “Back off.”

The Gamer let every ounce of his annoyance flow out from his physical being. The assistant raised a singular eyebrow. “I’m not in the mood for your glory seeking.” In a wreath of flame, Purgatory manifested on John’s left arm.

“Let me, tiger,” Rave suggested and took a few steps forwards. “Ya can’t stop both of us.”

“I’m willing to take that gamble.”

“Are ya willing to do it on top of the archaeological site?” Malady’s brown eyes narrowed. “Yeah, that’s what I thought. My deal: you and I are going to duke this out in a separate barrier.” In the background chaotic voices shouted as Aclysia hacked artificial limbs off people. “It’s the best you gonna get, ‘cause I don’t care one bit about an ancient pile of stones when I have a cure to look for.”

“…Fine,” Malady spat out.

John let the two of them leave the Illusion Barrier simultaneously. Then slammed his fist into the stomach of a foot soldier that was trying to grab him from behind. “Know your place,” the Gamer growled at the fighter. He may have been an elite soldier, but what did that matter to someone like John?

The man collapsed onto the ground, attempting to cope with the pain of a ruptured liver or some similar internal damage. Without a further word, John advanced into the ruin.

Immediately there were differences. The walls of this complex were unpainted, the stone naked and utilitarian. No mummies or elaborate mechanisms, no trials and no sacrifice pits, just a bunch of hallways and large rooms whose purpose was long lost.

John advanced through the complex. The first layer bore signs of the Illuminati making their way around. Archaeological excavation equipment and deactivated lights were left around. All of the exploration stopped at a collapsed stairway. Closing his eyes, John focused for a moment, then teleported to the layer below.

The air was stagnant and dry, but otherwise unremarkable. Keeping his feelers out, John walked through the absolute darkness. Darksight made him aware of everything around.

He moved fast, exploring each level of the complex in detail. Whatever he was looking for was most likely at the bottom, but he had no way to be certain and so preferred to at least look into every room. The chambers were all dedicated to alchemy and healing magic. A few stone tablets survived, covered in lengthy strings of pictographs that John had no time to decipher. Other rooms held storages of potion components that had long since rotted away to nothingness, with only a few dusts remaining untouched by the ages.

The complex had thirteen layers, likely mirrored by the thirteen hells the Abyssal Aztec’s believed in. In the end, what he was looking for really was all the way at the bottom.

The lowermost layer was a singular chamber of gargantuan size, easily larger than four football fields combined (the European ones). To John’s initial confusion, this chamber was not only gargantuan but also heavily decorated.

The curved ceiling was covered in venerating paintings of Huitzilopochtli. One phrase was repeated in all different ways that the artists could think of to write out, “We should never have distrusted our most benevolent lord, he who placed the final seal over his beloved daughter,” John translated. Momo may have still been more adept at translating these things, but when he was given so many different versions of the same phrase, he could stitch the meaning together easily.

On the floor of the circular chamber was a spiral of depictions of women or, as John eventually realized, a singular one. The snake house pattern showed a girl being pulled from her mother’s legs in the first iteration. Above them stood, with crossed arms, the blue warrior. Huitzilopochtli, as Nia had guessed, and as was now confirmed.

The girl grew up, eventually picking up an obsidian dagger. From that point onward, she was depicted with an axolotl either behind or around her. The two-dimensional depiction made it impossible to say for certain.

As the spiral continued, a three-step sequence repeated constantly between other events of her life. One depicted a person lying on an altar. The second depicted the woman driving her dagger into them. The third showed her devouring a purple fruit as the person walked away. Each time after these sequences, the woman was slightly altered.

Black hair turned white. Purple lines replaced tribal paintings. She stripped gold and clothes off her until only the minimum remained. Her extremities turned purple. At some points, she chopped off her limbs, for them to regrow.

In the outlines of the spiral, another phrase was spelled out in every way the artists could conceive. “Our blessed lady, the girl that is the spring water monster incarnate, devourer of the Giant’s Puss, how we prayed her stomach would never be filled. How we thank her for her final meal. Blessed be Nahua-xoco-atl-xolotl,” John mumbled, then his eyes rested on the centre of the room.

It was a disk, about a hands-width off the ground. It was equal parts artwork and intricate mechanism. Dozens of angular and curved depressions formed a mandala, between which prayers and warnings had been carved into the brown stone.

“Here the 13th Xipe-Totec rests, his body turned to seal. May Our Lord the Flayed One contain the putrid corpse of the sated axolotl, until her body regenerates, as Huitzilopochtli promised,” John translated what he could gleam from the seal.

The new timeline of events was quickly constructed. Distrusting of the gods that were incapable of solving the issue, Montezuma attempted to find a cure for the Giant’s Puss. The closest they had to a cure was Nahua-xoco-atl-xolotl, an apparent demigod and daughter of Huitzilopochtli. Either she was the first of the Diseased Knives or her natural regeneration ability allowed her to use the art better than anyone else.

However, it appeared that she helped more than her regeneration could provide. The final picture in the spiral of her life, before it connected to the seal, was her devouring a mountain of the purple fruit. In the background, sails sporting the symbol of the Spanish Armada could be seen. ‘So, this is what happened?’ John thought. ‘Nahua devoured all of the plague in the lands before the colonizers could catch it?’ He glanced up at the ceiling. ‘Then, Huitzilopochtli revealed he knew about this all along and offered his own expertise to seal Nahua away until she had regenerated?’

It was an inherently coherent chain of events in isolation, but John still felt that the pieces did not all fit together neatly. That could have been his paranoia. History was strange and he only had pictographs to piece together and the word of one witness that had only visited shortly a long time ago.

John knelt down and tried to peer behind the seal with his elemental senses. The stone was too thick and the seal itself pulsed still with incredible magic. A god-warrior had been transformed into this object. It was prudent to assume that he could not open this vault unless he had the necessary keys.

The first question he had to resolve was whether he wanted to open this vault. There would be no purer concentration of the disease than the vault below. If this demigod was still alive down there, itself an uncertainty, she may not be cooperative. Even if she had the ability to draw out and neutralize the disease, why would she do it for them?

The optimistic outcome was that she was both alive and willing to help. The pessimistic outcome was that she was dead and that John would release the most potent cloud of the disease yet. The likely outcome was that she was dead and that the disease, having run out of food, had dried up after devouring the corpse to the last. Alternatively, she was alive and her regeneration had been feeding the disease all this time, which meant she was there but he would release a noxious cloud anyhow.

Under other circumstances, John would not have contemplated such a terribly weighted choice.

‘The only people in the Illusion Barrier with me are Norahnon and his followers and Aclysia… and Aclysia is immune to this… acceptable losses for a chance to save my loves.’ John pulled out the three keys for the seal that he had gathered over time. He was dozens short, but he was willing to cheat. One quick message via Harem Comms and Gnome used her teleport to appear next to him. “We’ll try to fake keys,” he explained the plan to her. “If that doesn’t work, we’ll smash our way through.”

“You have no right to my daughter.”

John sighed, having felt the disturbance in the air just before the god had started to talk. “Then give me another solution,” he said and turned around.

Before a portal of darkness and blood stood a tall figure. He was a man, his skin blue, his face black, his toes and fingers highlighted red. Feathers of green, white, and sky blue sprouted from his head, shoulders, knees, elbows, and wrist. Short stubbles, like the tiny feathers growing on a bird’s head, replaced the hair on his arms and legs.

The god was nearly naked, save for a loincloth and an intricate golden crown made of woven rods on his head. Crimson stakes had been inserted under his skin at various points. The ends of them emerged from the blue of his hide and turned any attempt at Observe into plain black boxes. Where eyes should have been, the god possessed only white jewels. Even his teeth were made out of gemstones.

“I have humoured you long enough, intruder, but now you face the wrath of us, Huitzilopochtli.” Dramatically, the god of sacrifice pointed his spear at John, a weapon made out of gold. An obsidian snake curled up its length, the mouth opening wide. A bird’s head emerged from it, forming the ornate tip of the weapon with its sharp beak.

“I have a lot of questions for you,” John said.

“I owe you no answers!” the god of sacrifice charged forwards.

His spear stopped short of John’s chest. Hands of fire and watery tendrils had taken hold of the shaft. “We really aren’t in the fucking mood,” Salamander growled.

“Answer or leave,” Undine hissed.

“You go, girls!” Sylph cheered up from above. “No one makes the harem sick of anything except me of my constant babble!”

Huitzilopochtli ripped his spear back, after five deep trenches had suddenly appeared on his face. A stab to the chest was knocked aside and the swing of Gnome’s fist dodged. Siena revealed herself next to John, who now stood at the centre of his five elementals.

“I really don’t have time for you,” the Gamer snarled.