The Gamer Chapter 1009 – The mystery of the Death Zone 3 – On the Inside (Patreon)

John opened his eyes.

The first thing he saw were the windows.




John quickly jumped to his feet, his consciousness snapped into emergency mode at the view of what was above him. It wasn’t the unfamiliar starlit sky he had just had a conversation in, and much less was it the plain colour of the small hotel he had fallen asleep in. It was a miserable ceiling, like a night sky plastered on rock with oil paint. The black matter that served as the paint in that metaphor was simultaneously spongy and rigid, the mushroom-esque structure covered in jagged nails and teeth that stretched out. All of it was illuminated by spheres of light, miniature stars of magical energy whose radiance was sapped by the rot and mould that held them.

Underneath that sky was a chaotic landscape. What had once been the copy of whatever city they had been teleported to had been twisted throughout the years the Death Zone existed. Here and there, the signs of regular inner-city buildings still stuck out, but much lay in rubble or was covered in the grotesque growths. Pulsing roots spread over stone, concrete and dirt like an exposed nervous system. From it extended numerous other forms of corruption, some made entirely of the typical combination of teeth, eyes and fungoid stalks, others a despicable amalgam of it and bodies. Human bodies, expectedly, but also a vast number of elementals. The many shapes that elementals took, large and small, were scattered around the ruined landscape, covered in mould, and inert.

John had the time to look over all of this in detail, which was a factor allowing minor relaxation. Sadly, minor was as far as it got. On the rooftop of the five-story inner city office building he had spawned on, he was alone. Aclysia, Beatrice, Metra, Eliza, Nia and Rave were missing. ‘Not unexpected, but still worrying,’ the Gamer thought. ‘We were all pulled in at the same time, but emerged at random points throughout the barrier.’

That he could anticipate their separation in the first place was the only reason he was feeling calm. He reached into his inventory to retrieve his phone. There was no signal, unsurprisingly. That option exhausted, he raised his right hand to his mouth and spoke to his thumb. The Communication Crystal attached to the nail reacted to his wish and established a connection. There were two members in his group that he had to worry about more than the rest. The most vulnerable, he contacted first.

“Jane, can you hear me?”

“Roger that, tiger,” the voice of his girlfriend returned immediately. “I’ve ended up in some kind of suburb, I think? Small houses and trees that have teeth. Oh, and the sky is bleeding magma. Ya know, the usual hellscape stuff. Wonder if I’ll see an urban development planner if I wait long enough.”

“Suburbs, huh? I’m in an inner city. This barrier is probably several kilometres large.” John looked at his phone with the other hand, browsing through image files.

He had told Scarlett to fill his phone’s storage with maps of the largest population centres along the coast. The maps had been preferably as old as the Death Zone was, since they had to assume the original barrier was put up several years ago. Hard to come by in a hurry, so he often only had modern or relatively modern maps (basically those that came about after the establishment of the internet) to compare. As long as he could find some resemblance in the street network or what remained of the landmarks, he would be able to guess in which city they had ended up.

Stopping the browsing for a moment, he pulled the Mandala Sphere out of his inventory and sent it flying. The eye in the sky was helpful, both to scan for potential enemies and to get a better overview.

“Anything of note around you?” he asked.

“Aside from the lava fall? Not really, it’s all trees and disgusting Lorylim stuff around here,” Rave told him.

‘Master,’ Aclysia chimed into his thoughts, ‘I can spot something that may be the magma fall in the distance. Shall I teleport to your location or try to find Mistress there?’

‘Try to find Jane,’ John commanded her. The reason why she and Beatrice hadn’t already teleported to her location was exactly this situation. John was protected enough with his elementals around. “Alright, Aclysia is trying to find you. Stay put and, in roughly thirty minutes, fire a flare if she hasn’t found you yet. If she doesn’t find you ten minutes thereafter, we must assume you are in different parts of the barrier. Head towards the inner city, in that case.”

“Gonna do that. Hear ya in a day, at the latest,” Rave told him.

“Yeah,” John confirmed. As useful as it was that the Communication Crystals were practically immune to interference, they had their limitations. Most importantly, at the current tier of the Embassy (where they were created), they could only contact one other crystal at a time, only for ten minutes, and had a 24 hour cooldown between uses. That cooldown was actually bound to the user, not to the crystal itself, so an overproduction wouldn’t solve the issue. “Try contacting the others if Aclysia doesn’t find you. Ration the cooldowns and put the crystal into your dimensional pocket between uses.”

“Good thing we got that sorted out before this. See ya around, tiger.”

“Yeah.” The Gamer ended the communication there. As much as he wanted to continue talking to her, there was someone else that he needed to check on. The Artificial Spirits he had a permanent connection with and Nia had her ways to ward against corruption. Eliza, however, worried him somewhat. Her getting corrupted was extremely unlikely, but her having a panic attack was a bit more of a concern. “Eliza?” he directed the question at his thumb.

“Fucking shit, you startled me, you ass!” the voice of the blood mage responded immediately. There were some other sounds in the background.

“What is happening?”

“Getting attacked by some disgusting caterpillar looking thing. Wanted to squash it, but then your call reminded me that I have to watch out for this brittle-piece of shit!” Eliza informed him, presumably while jumping around. “I’m at some airport or some shit like that. At least this looks like it used to be a landing strip.”

“Airstrip…?” John wondered and scrolled through his maps. “Is there water east of you?”

“I don’t fucking know where EAST is, you absolute shithead.”

“Can you see the airport building?”

“Yes.”

“Face it, then turn right, that’s east. Is there water in that direction?”

“No,” Eliza told him, leaving him to click his tongue and about to discount his hunch. “Actually, scratch that, I’m a fucking moron,” she told him. “There is water, it’s just covered in… Lorylim tang? This place is fucking disgu- S…a… itch-“ The final words were only cracklings, then nothing.

“Eliza?” he asked, just to be certain. There was no answer. ‘Her crystal must have gotten destroyed.’ He surmised she had replacements in her own dimensional pocket. It would be a day before they could contact each other again though. John closed the maps and opened a timer app on his phone. That would be the best way to keep track of these things. ‘Alright, so we’re in Mobile, Alabama,’ he thought at the same time. ‘Which means, if I am in the city centre, there should be a canal east and a forest north of me.’

The Mandala Sphere flew around to verify. The canal was considerably closer and, now that he knew that water was covered by a thick black layer of Lorylim matter, he could spot it pretty easily. Having a good idea of directions made things a lot easier in terms of orienting himself. The next issue to figure out was how to meet up with everyone.

“Nia, can you hear me?” he tried to reach out again. This time he didn’t even get an answer. Chances were that Nia, like Eliza, had been less lucky than him and Rave and gotten into an altercation immediately. Her using her powers would have destroyed the crystal she carried with her. The only one, since a dimensional pocket would have suffered the same fate. ‘She’ll find us,’ the Gamer just thought. ‘Beatrice, what is your situation?’

‘Assumption: I am in the Mobile National Cemetery. I’m currently hiding from a shambling… thing…’ She sent him a mental picture of something that looked like the hunchback of Notre-Dame fused with the severed heads of a dozen elementals. They were attached to the abomination’s back, physical matter melding with human flesh in a certainly incomplete fashion, exposing muscles, sinews and bones under torn and cracked skin.

‘That’s over two kilometres from here. Use the teleport to get to me immediately.’

“Affirmative,” Beatrice said, now crouching right next to him. She rose to her feet and materialized her spear, Perfect, in hand.

A mere moment later, a tear opened up in the air next to John and Metra dropped out. Clicking her tongue, the First of Wrath made her annoyance audible. “Thought I could be here first,” she said.

“Statement: you should not waste your resources to outcompete me.”

“Statement: shut the fuck up, Beatrice.”

“Request denied.”

“Not quite the time for banter,” John interrupted them. Them being able to have relaxed chatter was a good trait to have, being frozen in the face of their enemies was a disadvantage in every possible way. However, he did not want to waste any more time than was necessary. “We’re moving south, to the airport. We’re avoiding combat for now, so keep quiet and a low profile. All communications will occur via mental paths. We’re moving with the maximum possible precaution.”

“As you desire, my king.” Metra bowed her head obediently; her armour, segment for segment, covered her body. Beatrice mimicked the motion, and they got moving. They jumped off the building and landed in the streets below. Lorylim particles scattered upwards. On contact with Beatrice, they turned into ash, an unexpected but appreciated side effect of her draconic transformation. Metra was shielded courtesy of her Astrotium layer. Not that either had reason to fear simple Lorylim spores. Their power level afforded them a certain immunity. Same was true for the elementals, but manifesting more bodies only added to their chance of being spotted.

‘Undine, I’m moving you out of quarantine,’ he announced to the abysstide elemental, pulling everyone into a mental conference. This move caused major surprise, so he explained himself swiftly. Not through words, at least not up-front, but by sharing his memories of the dream he had before waking up in this nightmare landscape. ‘The Lorylim connected me with Enki, it’s safe to assume they know where I am no matter the state of my personal corruption.’

‘They still may get more out of me than you,’ Undine stated.

‘Let them use up the rest of what they have of their corruption in you, then.’ The Gamer was firm on this matter. ‘We know it’s not a lot. For all I care they can spend it on learning about our initial plans and when it comes to locating us.’ The Gamer stepped over one of the pulsing veins that wound over the shattered pavement. ‘I don’t think they will struggle in this place.’

The better question was why they weren’t being attacked right that second. They walked by one of the inert elemental bodies. It had been some kind of centaur with the lower body of a lobster, rather than a horse, and a head that resembled a spider’s maw. That was horrifying by itself, but the stalks and teeth that grew out of the gaps of the motionless carapace, like a mixture of nuclear-induced mutation and the cordyceps fungus, elevated it to grotesque. A third eye, made up of mycelium, in the elemental’s forehead followed John, while the eight of the spider’s head only showed a broken spirit.

More horrifying than either the physical form or the fact that it could watch the trio passing by was this elemental having been there for a likely long time. Elementals dispersed when they ‘died’ to either be revived by their summoner or have their souls return to their respective planes. That this and other elementals were still physically present meant that their spirits were trapped in these corrupted husks. It was impossible that they had any sense of self remaining.

‘I can’t believe that fuckstain Enki really is still alive,’ Metra growled.

‘And he is at the heart of this,’ John told her. ‘He’s probably fully infested as well. I can only guess how or why though. Chances are that we’ll have to go through him to get out of here…’ He was not in control of the barrier, which meant they had no other choice than to neutralize whoever had it instead. ‘All of this falls within the accounted for scenarios. We’ll group up and move ahead as planned.’

They stopped when they heard the sounds of battle ahead. Then, when the Mandala Sphere let him see what was going on, John started sprinting ahead. Malevolent laughter rose up and he turned the corner.

He saw a man and a creature. One was on the floor, extending his hand in a panicked gesture of futile self-defence, the other was a dangling corpse from whose back several fleshy tendrils sprouted. The stomach was ripped open, a flower of teeth unfolding where the midriff had once been. Both the man and the creature were wearing Fusion’s military uniform.

John’s tactical decision may have led to sacrificing dozens of soldiers to this fate for tactical gain, but he would not stand by and witness such a death if he could stop it. The Arc Lance slammed into the Lorylim before it could bite the soldier. A moment later, Metra hit it with the axe-side of her halberd. The shredding sound of guitars and drums were far removed from the subtlety John had wanted. Alarmed shrieks could be heard throughout the nearby buildings.

“Come with me,” John commanded the soldier. He got no reaction but a baffled stare, so the Gamer did the only worthwhile thing and picked the man up, slung him over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes and sprinted towards the nearest building. They dived behind a wall and John looked out through a crack.

Numerous horrific amalgams of flesh, magic and infection approached the location where they had just been. The second they saw the dead monster, they all charged at the corpse. Human teeth, claws and elemental animal maws all descended on the dead Lorylim. None of them seemed to have any remote interest in finding out what had killed their ‘brethren’.

‘Something is off,’ the Gamer observed. ‘This is not typical Lorylim hivemind behaviour.’ Looking at Beatrice and Metra, he made a gesture with his head. ‘We’re moving deeper into the building.’ There was enough of the office complex left to hide inside and the soldier, somewhat thankfully, was still too paralyzed by fear to do anything else. Fusion military training was pretty thorough, and the instincts of the soldiers were at least honed enough to not scream unnecessarily.

They stopped inside a room filled with cubicles. Many of the shoulder-high walls were still around, but the black veins writhed through shattered glass and cracked walls even here. They only avoided a clearing in the centre of the room where numerous ritualistic circles had been carved into the concrete. The light that fell into the room was pale and artificial, intense like the floodlights they used to illuminate prison courtyards at night.

“What’s your name?” John asked the soldier; the man blinked. “Your name,” he repeated.

“Mi-Mister President?” he stammered, reality slowly kicking in. “What… where are-? Is this the Death Zone? I… no, no, no!”

The panicked cries came later than their own detection abilities. A creature the size of a small dog and shaped like a praying mantis descended from the ceiling. Before it could land on the soldier, it was swiped to the side by Beatrice’s spear. A moment later, the Lorylim was eviscerated.

The paralysis was gone now and the man crawled away from the corpse as if it could still jump at him. His back hit the wall of the cubicle they were hiding in. He was hyperventilating. This adult, healthy man, trained in numerous combat situations, was reduced to the base components of his military training and the flight response.

“Tell me your name,” John spoke in an insistent tone, trying to overcome the man’s panic by projecting authority. There was no reasoning someone out of a panic attack. In the short-term, the best one could do was to drown it out with a stronger emotion. “Soldier. Your name.”

“M… Mark, sir.”

“Your designated operation?”

“FLR-07, sir.” His voice was calming a bit now. The treatment was working as best as it could.

‘Florida Retreat, segment seven,’ the Gamer translated the code in his head. ‘He is part of the people that vanished on late Thursday… which means everyone before then is already gone…’ John clenched his fist. “Listen to me, Mark, you have to come with me and follow my orders. Do you understand? I want to get us out of here. I’ll leave no one behind who can be saved.”

“…Yes, sir,” Mark nodded weakly. It was self-evident that he was thankful for the opportunity to shut down his comprehension and just listen to someone who appeared confident that he could get him out of there.

John just hoped he could deliver on it as well.