MADMAN APOCALYPSE - Chapter -96 (Patreon)

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I might've had too much fun with this random Unicorn encounter <.<

Update:

Next chapter is a bit delayed this week because of a myriad of things, chief amongst which is the last chapter of Isekai Exorcist. You will still get 3 chapters this week, they might just be a bit delayed. Sorry about that!

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Chapter -96

My fist struck the upturned Unicorn in the belly with such force that it simply exploded in a shower of silver blood and pale-grey flesh. The sheer power of the strike generated a cushion of wind that sent the dagger-wielding Player skipping away along the ground and also pushed Bee higher into the air, while cancelling out my fall momentum and flinging me into an uncontrollable backflip, which terminated with me landing on one of the trucks that’d become a pufferfish.

            My collision was with something solid rather than the squishy body of a giant balloon animal and I looked down to see that the illusion had been dispelled, as I was in the back of the truck’s pick-up bed.

            The dagger guy came to a halt and slowly got to his feet, inspecting his own body for any remnants of the purple flames that’d covered him, but he was completely unscathed.

            “Illusions are scary,” I muttered, as I crawled out of the back of the truck.

            When I walked back to where the Unicorn had perished, Bee alighted next to me, a gleeful smile on her face. The force of my strike had formed a crater in the ground that had, moments prior, been beach sand, but was once again asphalt.

            “Look how much meat it had!” she said excitedly, hopping around and scooping up the pale-grey flesh, which then disappeared into her inventory.

            I blinked. “What?”

            “Horsemeat is delicious, don’t you know??”

            “You wanted to eat it?” Panda deadpanned.

            “Oh thank God, I thought you were a horse girl!”

            “What? No. Eww!”

            As the dagger-wielder saw us standing around the exploded remains of the Unicorn in the crater, he slowed down cautiously, looking ready to bolt at the first sign of hostility from us.

            “You’re Gambit, right?” he asked. He looked to be in his early twenties perhaps, with dirty-blonde hair, green-blue eyes, pudgy cheeks, and wearing a non-descript black hoodie and cargo pants.

            “Depends on who’s asking.”

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BAD CATCHPHRASE!

You have taken 1 point of damage.

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            “Ow. That’s not a catchphrase!”

            “What?” he asked, confused.

Bee shared his appraisal with me from her Nerdy Spectacles:

            “Ominous name for a Class,” Panda commented.

“Why do you want to know?” I asked him, suspiciously.

            “Listen, I don’t want any trouble with you. I’m not with Twine and those other guys, okay?”

            “What other guys?” Bee asked.

            “The ones who want revenge for Ophelia and Logan. I’m not with those guys. I just want whatever my friends dropped when they died. Okay?”

            Next to the white glowing wisp of the Unicorn was two blue wisps belonging to the Archer and Shield-Door guy. Their bodies had been destroyed along with the World Boss though.

            I narrowed my eyes, “That’s pretty callous ‘Chris’. If that’s even your real name.”

            Panda sighed. “Not this again…”

            I whipped out my Conspiracy Whistle and shared the tooltip with him:

            “Give me one good reason not to use this on you!” I yelled. “And don’t move an inch closer!!”

            “Fuck em up!!” Brock squealed.

            “Meow..” Lordie said knowingly.

            “What do you mean he doesn’t smell like a Skinstealer?” I asked the hand-spider, losing a bit of the wind in my sails.

            Chris the Backstabber finally seemed to notice the hand stuck to the top of my head and his eyes widened in confusion and disgust. “Why is there a dead hand on your head??”

            “It’s not dead,” Bee said.

            He used his finger to click away the tooltip I’d shared and said, “Anyway, I’m not a Skinstealer—”

            “That’s what a Skinstealer would say!”

            “Gambit, let him finish,” Bee scolded me, taking pity on the guy for some reason.

            “I just want the things my friends had on them when they died.”

            “You don’t seem very sad about them dying.”

            “Well, life goes on. If I was to get sad every time someone near me dies, I would be sad nonstop. You’ve also gotten numb to it, right? After some point, death just becomes a part of life. I’m going to keep surviving, even if it means looting the bodies of my friends.”

            “Pretty sure Gambit never had the ability to feel remorse for his actions,” Panda commented.

            I ignored him and told the Backstabber, “You can loot your friends once we’re done.”

            “Got it,” he replied and sat down on the ground, putting his hands away from the two sheaths attached to his belt, which held his daggers.

            I watched him for a moment, then put my Whistle away.

            Bee went over to the white wisp of the World Boss and shared the Leftover items with me:

            “Dibs on the horn!” she immediately said.

            “That’s fine, I’ll take the blood.”

            A cold and slimy grey lump covered in dark veins landed in my hands.

            “Oooh, horse liver!” Bee said excitedly and immediately began eating it raw.

            I frowned and inspected it:

            “Fuck whoever is making these pop-ups,” I said and bit into it. Then, while the cold and slimy meat filled my mouth with a bitter taste that not even the Pearnana effect could overshadow with its vanilla-banana flavor, I smiled for whatever ‘camera’ was observing me.

            As I considered the options, I saw that even Chris was holding a Unicorn Liver in his hands where he sat.

            “Is this really worth eating?” he asked us.

            “I got a new Class ability,” Bee told him.

            I picked ‘.unicorn( )’, mostly out of curiosity, and said, “Me too.”

            The Backstabber sighed and bit into the slimy flesh, immediately gagging violently.

            “Don’t forget to smile!” Bee told him.

            “I hate this Game,” he mumbled, then faked a smile.

            “.unicorn( ),” I said, activating my new ability.

            The sound of a jet came from something that soared down the street, just above rooftop-level, and when it passed over us, it left behind a trail of rainbow smoke, almost like in an airshow. The ‘jet’ turned out to be a unicorn with a rainbow-colored mane and its legs splayed out to the sides like wings.

            We all watched as it continued down the street, before angling ninety degrees into the air and disappearing up into a cloud that manifested right above it a few seconds later.

            “What the fuck was that?” Chris asked, half a chunk of liver hanging out of his open mouth.

            “Was that your new ability?” Bee added.

            “I have no idea what that did,” I replied.

            “This is where curiosity gets you…” Panda muttered disapprovingly. “You should’ve picked ‘The Unicorn Effect’.”

            “I can’t wait to use it again,” I said, ignoring him.

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Fun fact: the ".unicorn( )" ability is inspired by a secret 'feature' I once added to a school project without my group's knowledge. I was the only one really coding the project, while everyone else twiddled their thumbs, so I added this special feature. When you pressed 'u' as the program was running, all the assets would turn into an animated sprite of a running unicorn, while several additional unicorns would run across the screen at random intervals.