B2 - Chapter 8: Let's Play a Game, Part 1 of 2 (Patreon)

Author's note: Happy Canada Day, everyone! Here's an extra long, 4,000 word chapter to celebrate. :-)

Logan had gone through a lot of hardship since the System Integration, had survived the queen serpent through the skin of his teeth, suffered through pain, missing limbs, literal torture in the dexterity trial, not to mention the fight against the Silverdagger Clan and the mental anguish of being forced to kill Asthea, someone he’d viewed as a friend.

But this was the first situation where he wondered if the System was laughing at him. Forget the squishy blobs, this was too absurd. It was as if it had decided to come up with the most whacked scenario possible just to wind him up and watch him go, a rat in a maze. He imagined it watching Logan from up on high and laughing. Look at the user scrambling like an idiot. Let’s wager whether he chooses option number one, pull a solution out of his ass, or option number two, be crushed to death!

Noxious sewage that smelled like garbage? A sewage monster that was trying to use its shell like a garbage contractor to crush him to death? Holy fuck, he might as well be Luke Skywalker in the trash compactor on the Death Star!

“Why struggle,” crooned the snail from amongst the metal clatter. It was like hearing a voice inside of a dark garbage truck, echoing and endless. “Human meat, little octopus? Come closer, come. I will eat you quickly, crunchy crunchy. No pain at all, mmh?”

Ding!

[You have defeated a Level 58 Flying Hunting Snake!]

[You have defeated a Level 62 Flying Hunting Snake!]

Outside, the Cursed Rope must still be at work, but there was a marked lack of System notifications from Ernie’s two snake minions. The snake swarm must have overwhelmed them.

Logan pounded his fist against the steel contracting around them. Since he’d tripled his attributes with the True Grit Ring, he hadn’t had a chance to test his strength, but he’d pulverized a few planks when trying to help the blobs prepare for war. If he were that strong without the tripling effect, now, his strength must be off the charts.

Growling, Logan went to town, slamming his fist repeatedly like hitting a punching bag. Amongst the rattling, clanging of pipes, and shifting metal plates, it sounded as if he were hitting the shell with a battering ram. Bang bang bang. The metal shell shuddered, but no matter how many times he hit it, there were no dents, no cracks. It was like hitting an indestructible wall.

Worst yet, each slam of his fist sprayed fluid. Although it looked like black oil, it reeked way too badly to be engine fluid.

Ugh.

In the darkness, the snail’s voice sounded like it was coming from all around them. “Keep it up, human meat! You’re helping to scratch an itch that I couldn’t reach for days.”

Fuck!

Panting, Logan let his fist drop. For the first time, he started to feel a fission of uncertainty. Combined with the noxious smell, a roiling sensation in his stomach made acid surge. Logan swallowed and briefly contemplated activating [Foresight], but if the skill showed him a future where the snail crushed them to death, what was the point? He needed a way out of here, and he was rapidly running out of time.

The shell kept contracting, sending more and more cracks through his armour. He repaired them just as fast, but he could only keep this up for so long.

Worse yet, he was losing moveability. Eventually, the metal would compact so severely that forget punching the shell, he’d be hard set to move his arm.

“Logan,” said Ernie. “This pouch is starting to feel tight! Sand is raining down and covering my tentacles in dust.”

Oh shit. If worst came to worst, Logan felt he could withstand a crushed, pulverized body. He had [Regenerate], after all. He’d survived worse in the perception trial as the acid ate away at his skin and flesh, but Ernie was a different story. He was lower leveled than Logan and had a [Mimicry] skill that didn’t involve armour. His body was way too fleshy to withstand this for long.

Gradually, that sick feeling in his stomach turned to trepidation. Fuck fuck fuck! He needed to come up with a solution. Logan scanned the contents of his spatial collar, but a barbeque lighter, Asthea’s crossbow and Arsen’s daggers wouldn’t do shit. There were the bombs, but Logan didn’t have that amount of confidence… survive a blast at close range? Not to mention that Ernie would be in the blast radius.

Thorin’s sword might have been a solution five minutes ago, but it was double the length of his baseball bat. He didn’t have enough space to swing!

There could be one solution.

He’d leveled up four times so far, which meant that he had 20 free attributes. He knew he needed a 3500 Karma pool to unlock [Liche Devourer], which was nowhere close to his current pool of 2028. However, he could unlock [Life Fabricator] with a higher Karma regeneration rate. The problem was that the description of the skill didn’t tell him by how much.

Still, there was a chance.

Decision made, Logan slammed all 20 free attributes into his wisdom stat with a hope and a prayer.

[Wisdom: 316]

[Wisdom: 317+]

[Wisdom: 335]

Logan gasped, his eyes bulging. He was worried that the upgrade would incapacitate him with another scene from his childhood, but this time, scenes from his past rushed through his mind too quickly to capture, flashing like watching an old-fashioned Polaroid clip. Logan ground his teeth and pushed the scenes to the back of his mind, his worry for Ernie all encompassing.

His [Fabled Creation] class gave him a 30% boost to his intelligence and wisdom attributes, which meant he’d increased his wisdom stat from 410 to 435.

Would that be enough to unlock [Life Fabricator]?

With hope surging, Logan pulled up the description of the skill.

[Through intricate and highly precise work, this skill allows you to build, repair and control the life cycle of beings by cutting, bending, and assembling. Level is commensurate with your Karma pool and Karma regeneration rate. KarmaCoin awarded is based on carbon capture impact. Locked. Karma regeneration rate requirement not met!]

Fuck’s sake! Logan felt adrenaline rush through his body as his rage surged. If the System hadn’t ‘awarded’ him by taking away [Life Cycle Master] and replacing it with a locked skill, he would have gotten out of this situation by now. The damn monster snail had enough bacteria hanging around it to put it down for the count. It would have been effortless, like snaping his fingers.

After trying so hard in the trial dungeon and coming out a changed man, it was beyond rage inducing to know that the System had screwed him over yet again.

“LOGAN,” shouted Ernie mentally, his voice full of panic.

“Crunchy crunchy,” said the snail in excitement.

The metal of the shell had compacted even more; he had no maneuver room at all. Logan was hard set to even move his arms! Ernie’s pouch was cracking, sand falling like a dust storm.

If Ernie died from an encounter with a stinky snail, he would never live with himself. The sound of his heartbeat thrashing in his ears, Logan scrambled for a solution. But if the snail surrounded them on all sides—from the sides, the top to the bott…

The bottom.

The ground!

The thing was crushing them from all sides, but the shell wasn’t underneath his feet. That was slime covered rattlesnake grass and dirt!

“Hold on, Ernie!”

Looking down at the slime covered ground, Logan willed a huge excavator’s bucket of dirt into his spatial collar. Just like on the top of the gorge, the collar obeyed. Only this time, he was removing dirt that was directly underneath his feet.

Logan dropped like a stone.

His crumbling sandstone boots slammed into the hole and directly into a pile of sludge. But it didn’t matter! They were free of the shell!

Logan didn’t allow himself any time to breathe, at once willing another scoop of sludgy material inside of his spatial collar and sending them plummeting again.

The clanging of the metal up above stopped.

He’d given them a chance to breathe.

There were a few different options in front of him. Logan could continue scooping earth, tunneling at an angle and away from the snail until he went straight up and out of the ground. That would allow them to escape. The snail was so slow that there was no way it would trap them underneath its shell again. To do that, they’d have to get up close with the thing. Like hell was that happening. Logan loved Ernie to death, but although Ernie wanted to slaughter everything, he had a serious failing.

Curiosity.

And a willingness to believe that other sentient animals were just like him. It was only after the snail had wanted ‘discourse’ that it had lured Ernie into its shell.

So, they could escape. Escape easily. But if the shell were so tough that Logan couldn’t make a dent with his fists, how would they attack from above? The snail would shelter its fleshy body with its metal shell like a turtle, giving them no option but to leave it alone.

Logan didn’t like that option. After what they’d just been through, he needed to teach the snail a lesson.

You didn’t fuck with Logan.

Plus, there was another part to his calculation.

The thing was level 140. Killing it would give him a huge level increase, possibly enough to increase his Karma regeneration rate enough to unlock [Life Fabricator].

“You should stay inside your pouch, Ernie. There might be some nasty fluid coming our way.”

“…Nasty fluid? Ugh. Don’t tell me you’re doing what I think you’re doing.”

Underneath his facemask, Logan grinned.

Instead of scooping out more slushy dirt that would lead them away from the snail, he looped back around. Scoop after scoop, he carved a tunnel through the earth, winding around, and going directly underneath the snail.

This would have been a heck of a lot easier with [Life Cycle Master]. He could have sensed the snail and pinpointed its exact location. Instead, he had to estimate it based on the monster’s mutters.

“Lost a meal, lost a meal. Fine dining, a sushi special. No tentacle delicacies! No human smorgasbord! Now only the stinky pipe. So sick of the stinky pipe!” The last mutter was more like a wail.

Logan ground his teeth and adjusted at the last minute, tilting his tunnel slightly to the left. The snail must have moved since he dropped into the hole. As is, the hole was only big enough for Logan—there was no way that thing was coming down here, and the chasm and the tunnel weren’t connected anyway.

Logan paused.

This part could be tricky.

He was sure he was directly underneath the thing, but if he removed too much dirt, the whole three-ton snail could fall on top of them. Instead, he wanted access to the slimy body, but only enough to do damage.

To be safe, Logan removed five planks from his spatial storage. In the tactician trial, the blobs hadn’t needed all of them for the wagons, and Logan had grabbed the rest. If he used them as braces, they should be enough to keep the ground stable.

Angling the boards, he braced them like support posts, gently tapping them into place to avoid shattering them from his sheer strength. Plus, he needed to be as quiet as possible so as not to alert the snail. This wouldn’t work if the thing moved.

“Keep in the pouch, Ernie. The ground isn’t stable and this whole thing could come down on top of us.”

“Ernie will stay. Although he loves slaughtering, this kind of slaughtering doesn’t appeal! Why must the smell persist? Ugh.”

Ernie was right. The smell was wafting in from the opening of the tunnel. Ugh, even down here, that thing reeked like a skunk had rolled in a pile of rotting meat.

Logan needed one more thing before he put his plan into action.

Thorin’s sword.

The thing had seemed ridiculous before, and not a weapon that said ‘Logan.’ If he walked around with it, he’d feel self-conscious as if he were playing dress up. Logan could just picture his ex-girlfriend commenting that he was overcompensating.

But he needed to get over himself. What did appearances matter if the thing worked? And in this situation, the weapon was perfect.

It was sharp enough to cut down rock people. Thorin had gone to town, chopping off rock limbs and heads in the tactician trial. And it was long enough that if he managed to pierce the snail’s fleshy body, he could stab the thing, doing real damage.  

With a grin of savage satisfaction, Logan carefully examined the dirt up above. He wanted a narrow strip, an opening like a crack created by an earthquake. Something long, with just enough width for the sword.

“Get ready.”

<------Go to part 2.