C8: The False Dream
" Arghhhh! "
Screamed Ina, now awake. Her breath heavy and challenging, as if she was learning how to breath in real time. She could the expansion and contraction of her lungs to the chill in her throat when air flowed. Sweat covered her body, leaving no place untouched. The sensation had shook her up. In an attempt to ease the chaotic feeling deep within her chest, she placed her hand onto her heart and regulated her breathing. The pain was horrible, to the extent that she wished she had been dead. But at last, she still stranded here.
Trying to get up, Ina immediately lied down again due to a sharp pain in her core and legs. Knowing that she had to take a look to see whether or not emergency rescuers had arrived, she opened her eyelids and took a look at her surrounding.
" No.... NO! Bring me back! Please!"
Her cries reverberated, echoing back at her as if mocking her desperation. She was not in the dark forest with a burning car anymore. No, she was in somewhere worse. An innumerable number of staircases and platforms connecting to structures stretching beyond the horizon and minimizing her existence. The space was ... lively. It changed, flowed, altered into a different state in front of her eyes every moments, every seconds. In the midst of all the chaos around here, the only thing consistent was, ironic enough, the chaos. The architectures changed from old Japanese to ancient Greek, from modernism to bio-mimicry. The air took a dive or a rocket at every breath or Ina. Once the dry, scorching air flowing upward like in a desert, now humid and cold air like after a midwinter rain, next a thin air as if at the top of Mt. Everest.
No belief in a firm order or concrete structure, the space was uncaring and she, the same feeling. Ina could never understand the rules behind the place even if an eternity had passed. Lost in the scale of things, Ina could feel her hip pain lessened. Now she could get up and find a way out. She mustered all her strength before pushing herself up the stone ground. The thigh muscles ached under her weight.
" If I were you, I would rest a bit more. "
Ina turned her head, trying to locate the source. The pain had turned into secondary concern for her. Someone was here, she couldn't find him, that was something she trembled at the first thought of.
" Look inside!"
The voice screamed. Using the method of elimination, Ina reached a disturbing conclusion.
" What are you doing in my head? And how did you get in here without my knowledge? "
" Without?! Pfff... Hahahahahahahahahhahahahahahahaha.... remember the moment you choose [Yes]?
In the continuous laughter of the voice, she could make out a hint. The option that had saved her family. And the pain, the fire that got to her and burned her alive metaphorically. Somehow, she knew that this voice would accompany her to the end of her journey here.
" Look for a sign. Dear Charlotte... It is obvious."
That name, she had already forsaken it for a better name, Ina Minaru. The name that represented her dark past was her deepest secret, and the being talking to her just disclosed it. As if sensing the turbulence in her thoughts, the voice faked a cough before switching to " Ina" . She appreciated the small concern.
" A sign? Where, in this chaos?!"
Despite the futility of the task, Ina still made an effort to get up and look around. A new door had appeared behind her, another constant in the midst of the never-ending chaos, with a sign on it that read ... "Sign". Facing the absurdity, Ina could do nothing but got to the oak door, turned the doorknob and swung open the door. The door trembled and creaked during the process, leaving Ina with a great amount of unease.
What met her on the other side was a road, a Roman stone paved road leading straight to somewhere hidden behind a thick layer of fog. The path forward uncertain and could be filled with challenges.
" Venture forth, my successor, get to the end and you will wake up. "
Despite how many times Ina asked the voice later what it meant with "successor", nothing did she receive. Sighing in resignation, she took a step through the dilapidated doorframe. The door crumbled down into saw dust behind, leaving her stranded on the strange path. Ina started treading forward, leaving behind the chaotic dream.
-------------------------------------------------------------
Long time later, a forest somewhere
Heavy rain poured down like javelins, cutting through the thick canopy of the woods as easily as knives slicing butter. On the side of the road sat a grown-up Ina beside a fire camp she built . She had grown to a respectable 1m64, her body matured into an hourglass model. Her face, aside from the usual mischievous grin, had been gifted during the growth period and acquired a charming quality, to the point of stealing every men's gazes and attention by simply smiling.
The muscles in her body possessed extreme flexibility and could turn from soft to hardened in the matter of milliseconds. Her hairs had turned ashen white, bleached by the blessing she received after ending the reign of terror of Wraith in the Farun Maleth capital city.. Her clothes, despite their unassuming look, were durable enough to endure the temperature of a star for more than a minute and strong enough to withstand accelerated material railgun shells. They had been stolen from a storage unit in one of the many labs she had raided.
She had learnt how to use the System given to her, especially its inventory and note feature. The inventory manifested as a black 2D circle with sizes changing to fit the item Ina wished to put in. It was not as overpowered as the depiction in anime and manga. Ina had tested it by placing a boiled potato she salvaged from a ruin of a Middle Age city and ignored the thing for a few days. After finishing up Incarnation of Envy later did she remember and bring out the thing. Fungus had appeared on the food, spoiling the thing. From that she discovered 3 things. The inventory was not limited to only dead things; it had air suitable for breathing and inhabiting; and it didn't slow down time or stop it. The facts had led to the invention of her preferred hunting style: hiding inside the space, open a circle just for her eyes and hunt.
For the note features, it was a godsend for Ina as she had to plan the attacks toward the Incarnation of Sin. With features she bargained with the System herself, consisting of, but not excluding, a physics engine to simulate causality, many editing tools and methods to better store and organize information and an automatic "quill" noting what she might have missed from the people she came across. The note also reminded her of her goals: Return to the real world. If not for that goal Ina would have given up and stayed stagnant.
The place, as she had learnt later, was a "false dream" created by an evil god using concepts picked from the timeline of the homo sapiens race. As a result, various conflicting settings were combined homogenously, leading to the mess she had to travelled through. One example of this had been the time when she had to saved a group of farmers with Medieval clothing from a squad of androids under the control of a mad racist scientist.
Aside from the different gernes mixing and conflicting information she got from them peacefully ( or by force), the experience was not as hopeless as she thought. From a town and a treasure hunting quest did she get her favorite melee weapon, the Skydancer, a pair of short swords suitable for quick stabbing and slicing, enchanted with anti- corrosion, anti- breaking, self-repair and auto-return. And from a dystopian sci-fi city did she smuggle herself a set of plasma swords, assault rifles and pistols. Due to battery issue in the swords, they served the purpose of cutter and disinfection from the heat before overheating themselves. Fixing them using stolen components and books had challenged her greatly at the start, but now she understood them like the back of her hand.
In the mixed smell of anemone and butterfly weed waffling up. Ina added the finishing touches to her diary detailing the experience of the day. Like the other tiring days, the note function was her venting method, to express herself in the white, plain text.
" Day 147, year 6
The end is near, I could feel it. Today, I have fought through a fortress of cultists and emerged better with the blessing of the Vortex One worshipped there.
The Sins I have fought through, 6 of them, signaling that the final opponent would be Gluttony, or Avarice. His information elusive, to a dangerous level. If not for the pattern I encountered while travelling I would not think of his existence. Maybe his power, just like the name, has devoured all memories that could lead to its discovery?
Just hoping ending him would be the end. "
-------------------------------------------------------------
" You have come, Ina ... how do you find my world? "
The voice, Ina couldn't forget it. The first thing that had guided her and led her down the marbled path.
" So it was you who pushed me into this journey, Gluttony. "
" I used to have a name revered like that of a Saint, but now, Gluttony is fine. "
What greeted her was not a demonic presence or something world-shattering being. The being appeared in the ethereal form of a young boy, his golden hair comparable to the first ray of dawn and his eyes captured the whole sunny sky. In this grim dark setting, the boy's cheerful appearance was out-of-place, a reminder of how the world had been before the messy combination. That boy was her target and she was ready with weapons standby.
" Do I have to end you now? "
" Yes, but the location here is too high above, the place you need to be to vanquish me is the adobe underground. The barricaded chamber, spanning the whole old capital and connecting to various underground tunnels and sewers. My body will be down there, awaiting the moment your foot stepped inside its domain to begin hunting. I have something to gift you. Here, take this, a gift from an evil god. "
Gluttony threw her a black rune stone. Under careful inspection, it seemed the rune had bene packed so tightly with runes to the point of 100% coverage using techniques she guessed had been spatial expansion and multi-path links using different inks due to differences in textures and thickness felt by her finger. . She pocketed the thing, wondering its purpose. The weight of the item surpassed what she imagined and the stone put a hole in the pocket of the jeans she was wearing. It fell down, rolled on the ground a short distance before stopping, mocking her attempt. Frustrated, she was going to ask Gluttony how to store the stone before he spoke.
" I would recommend you to swallow the stone, you will need it on your body. But beforehand, touch the stone to this place. "
From the boy palms flew out a piece of flintstone creating a fire camp, in it an amber sword glowed, showing the way through the darkness. On the ground near the fire was circles with additional details Ina could not understand, but she knew they held some meanings as they glowed in a pattern, calling her to put the stone into the flame.
From the weird phrasing and the intricacy of the procedure, Ina could make an educated guess. She hated the idea as it would constrict her, trapping her in something truly horrendous.
" A resurrection ritual, is it? "
" Sharp, as expected from you. Those items and interactions will bind you temporarily to the main body's energy, letting you come back after being killed by the thing. Remember this very clearly, the closer you are to killing the source, the worse the side effects of dying will be. The energy won't be enough to shield you from them. "
" Hypothetically speaking, can I end myself enough time to wither down the body? The energy is shared after all. "
" You can, but the process will leave you insane. Someone have already tried that but he ended up in a a state of broken-minded after the 35th, his mental prowess was unmatched in his time and comparable to you. Don't waste your time on that. Try something else new, maybe confronting the beast. "
Someone had already tried it, Ina pondered. It meant that aside from her, someone, or many other people had treaded on the same path as her. That explained the left-behind items she found across the journey. Of course to repay the givers' kindness, she had also left support items behind in the hope of someone needing them would found her stash.
" Can you give me a direction to go with then? I could not find a single method to kill a monster with enough power to defy death. I am even depended on the thing to keep me alive"
" My name... That's all I can say. He has already showered you with leniency during the journey. He wishes you can have the challenge like many others"
"He", Ina believed, had to be the Sovereign that had brought her here. The leniency must had been the strange red energy she had been using to enhance her body to keep the fight going. But the plural "leniencies" suggested something more.
The vague hint gave Ina a few options to run through though, and none that she enjoyed doing. She was not a masochist and the pain, from her assumption, of being eaten would be comparable to facing death.
" Down you go, little lamb. Make a miracle!"
Gluttony pointed to an old elevator. Stepping in would bring her down to the same place as the body of a god, and it would hunt her down there, in its home turf. The thrill already made her face flushed and her heart beat so fast she could almost felt it popping out of her chest.
She stepped in, waved at Gluttony before descending into the chasm below, facing the final hurdle on her journey home.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
" 1st try: maimed to death by something lurking in the shadow, the speed was extraordinary, nimble enough to dodge plasma cases, and in tandem with great control over the pace. Will bulk up to survive the first attack, then start scouting the area. Never know that being decapitated from the get go would be a good start. The being attacked after I had walked a considerable distance away from the elevator. It knew how to cut off escape routes before attacking, smart one, I have to admit. This time serves as a reminder of the upcoming challenges beneath the surface. "
----------------------------------------------------------------------
" 2nd try: bulking partially successful, a preliminary map of 1 km^2 around has been made. The beast does not only know melee, it also possesses long-range options. It seemed to fire something from its tail and head side tentacles, as I could feel something amiss with the appendages.
Being sniped while climbing a ladder wasn't fun. Something made contact, no color, no presence, just something hit and I fell, dropping directly to an opened spike traps below. The feeling of blood feeling out from 6 cm wide holes are chilling as warm liquid seeped out from them. Before that, my instinct did scream like a fire alarm but the speed was too fast. Maybe I will enhance my body more with aura.
Aside from the long range, the claws seem to to be able to phase out and into existence as the beast's attack went passed my shoulder armor and dug a hole in it. And the electronics inside some of the trap packs were slashed despite no outside entrance. Less armor and more agility will do the trick"
----------------------------------------------------------------------
" 3th try: the most environmentally destructive fight so far . The shot fired by the heat pistol kept being deflected by its ovoid head, leaving holes in the surrounding structure. This has led to major collapsing of the underground area, dividing the area and increasing the risks. The rhythm only changed when one of the strayed shot hit something on its chin, bursting the thing and spreading bright green corrosive blood around the place. Even worse, the fluid released flammable gases. The beast used that opportunity to run its claws together, sparking a large fire spreading all over the place due to residual butane in the air. That led to me jumping into the sewer water and being impaled by its tail from a blind spot. That thing can traverse underwater, never know that. "
----------------------------------------------------------------------
" 4th try: everything returned to normal this time. Gluttony said that it was due to magic. But seeing the soot on the the bastard's armor reveal one exemption from that everything. I can wither it down and the accumulation will end it. The fight went on for about 30 minutes before I saw that the sustained injuries from the traditional piercing grounds had closed up and stiched themselves together. That regeneration throws a wrench into the long fight plan. I need to end the fight quick. But the beast has learned from the
experiences. It has learned to set up more traps using its acidic blood and restricting my movement by collapsing parts of the system. But the feeling then was curiosity rather than malice. The beast has adequate intelligent to study and grow from our encounters. "
---------------------------------------------------------------------
" 5th to 15th tries: a series of experiment on the kind of weapons and methods for hunting down the bastard. The conclusion: gunpowder-based piercing rounds in combination with ionic shotgun's pellets for long-rang and medium-rang application; the twins words for close-quarter combat; and plasma knife for cutting open the thick armor of the thing. One useful heavy weapon is the Scourge launcher, blasting a hole as wide as a diameter of 10 meters. The thing works by combining solidary waves onto the Higgs field, resulting in the appearance of antimatter and matter simultaneously at the same point in space. The energy from the self-annihilation of the pair creates the energy to rip open almost anything. The only issue is the charge-up time, leaving only one use possible during battle. That will mark the end of the battle if fired correctly. "
" 16th try: Something's strange. The bastard lies dormant in his lair this time, possibly from the exhaustion of the fights. The opportunity allows for a quick kill but something inside me just told me to not do it. Maybe it was the strange hint of Gluttony or the shared purpose I and the bastard have. Survival. I fight so hard to not perish in this dream and return home, it fights so hard to survive from the onslaught. Thinking that way, we are so so similar, just beasts fighting to survive with the hands dealt to us.
But when woken up, the bastard did not attacked, no, it only observed me not as an opponent. By the pitiful glances it gave from its 6 yellow eyes shining in the dark, I could feel some strange feeling in my heart, the kind of shame and embarrassment for bringing the fight to it.
Th end was anticlimactic. The bastard only ended me quickly to send me back above. It seemed to ponder something. Never before would I imagine being connected to a monster like that in this way."
----------------------------------------------------------------------
The beast did wake up from its sleep, but it never attacked. It just observed its opponent, the one clad in black armor with strange tools on its hips and in its feeble arms. It knew that it needed to kill the thing to not be targetted again but the experiences rung in its mind, reminding of how hopeless its situation was. Facing the same enemy multiple times, each encounter inching closer to the thing's favor than the last, it drew an absolute ending. It would die, not this time but sometime in the future when the thing opposite of it had fully matured. Its fight was futile against the attempts, yet it could not stop resisting the inevitable fate. And from its perspective, they both are similar. But the thing situation was worse than it. The thing fought for something valuable to it in combination with survivals. From the mutter of it, its goal seemed to be " home". The beast could only give the thing, its enemy, its pity. While it got its wish after every fight for a time period, rest and peace, the thing toiled for its dream, stepped in the agony of an unfulfilled wish.
It could feel its body breaking down gradually. Its eyes and reaction speed was not as sharp nor fast as they had been. The legs now so easily buckled under the weight of a single pillar. It knew that death was coming and the black thing had accelerated the process. It held no resentment as that feeling it had been living in for all the time. The consciousness above sent the thing down in that wooden elevator, that it was sure of, but its other self was too prideful to not even gave a single thought about the body below and pondered whether or not another self had arisen.
Without a vocal chord or humanoid body type, combat remained the only path for understanding. But the allocated time was running out. A gift, the monster thought, a parting gift. It knew the only present suitable for that black thing, no, that human (its pride hindered its recognition of the weak race) was that thing. It was ready, for the unification of the two separated beings and the death of them in unison. But now, preparation needed to be made for the human that had allowed it to enjoy a final hunt.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
After the 16th attempt of hunting down the beast, Ina's feeling was mixed. She knew that the beast was preparing something big, something that she couldn't avoid and would suffer from. And yet she couldn't shrug away the leeches of curiosity clinging on her mind. The idea of taking the challenge on gave her something to look forward in the midst of the failures.
" Another failure? You are only haft way to the limit. Do you think you can go on another dive before resting for the day? "
" Just let me sleep. I am too tired already."
Ina went to a covered corner and sat down, preparing to sleep. But the after effects of death still weigh on her mind. The reduction of sensitivity to memories and events in her mind really drove her insane. The first few deaths had been basically consequence-less, but the latest one had felt as if she was disassociating from her past self and those memories were disconnected, as if they were injected from outside into her brain. Her logic knew the identity of those inside these memories, but her self distanced itself from the people and the events. As a result, she had been more robotic than the past. She could now imagine why that hero Gluttony told her had ended himself: his brain reached a conclusion that contradicted his existence and in front of the futility of existence that his body drew upon, it ended itself.
She knew she was approaching that limits, but her dream forbid her from giving up. She fell asleep mind racing, thinking if the upcoming fight would be her end.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
The beast had drawn all night a grand ritual circle spanning the entire home it was going to part the day after. The knowledge came from the plethora number of books, scrolls and scriptures stored in the library at a corner of the labyrinth it resided. It never appreciated the place before, thinking that the items there had been useless. Oh how wrong it was for today.
Using its psychic breath in small volume to carve the engravings into the cracked marble floor and its tail and body to break down the pillars to open up the space, the beast exhausted itself from all the preparations, but it had never felt such feeling before, such ... joy. Could the joy come from the coming departure? The beast wondered but erased the thought immediately after.
The bells, it managed to salve 5 of them, needed to be rung in a specific orders. The choir and chanting were not needed for the ritual to go on. The beast arranged the copper bells in a pentagram order on the perimeter of the ritual circle, marking each with the corresponding runes from the transfer process to the psychic conversation procedure.
After a long night, every preparations ended with a single yellow egg a size of a car being put in the middle of the circle. Inside the transparent slimy shell could one see a ... beast in a fetal position, its 6 eyes shut tight and its claws retracted. Connecting to the egg were countless tentacles and fleshy appendages providing it with nutrients from who knew where.
Looking at the egg, its method of staying immortal, the beast made a crooked, bone-chilling laughter to itself, to the coming end and to its final frenemy. As if drunk on the unseen moon high above, the beast gazed up the ceiling the entire night, awaiting.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
The next morning was horrendous to Ina as that time came again. She just wished she could stop the stomach cramps but nevertheless, she had something to do. Limping toward the elevator and tiredly bid goodbye to the same scene for the 17th time, she descended. This time, the wait was longer, or was it her pain that caused every seconds to turn into minutes. The elevator dropped to an open space, where pillars used to stand now were nothing, where the beautifully white marble floor with decorations used to lie now were charred inky lines. Looking around, Ina could not help but to notice the beast awaiting her.
She did not immediately bring her weapon out as there was no hostility. The beast only observed her before turning back and giving her a signal by curling its tail, telling her to follow it. She complied, trailing behind the black beast and removing her helmet, letting her white hair out. One beast, one man, no, two beasts, one black one white, walked together. They reached the bells and tolled them one by one, letting the sound reverberating in the enclosed space. They walked in circles and circles, taking in the restricted air, the echoes off the imperfect walls, and one another. For Ina, her enemy had become her way to get out of here. For the beast, the white human behind it was its savior by giving it the final push to end the cycle.
The two ended their journey at the center, standing in front of the gigantic egg. Taking minutes to stare at, to observe the being inside the liquids, Ina finally spoke.
"So, this is your young? "
She find the idea amusing, as she had seen Gluttony, a boy above the ground, and her common sense told her that the beast was also male. Seeing the egg really inputted some weird ideas into her brain. She could only look back and forth between the beast aside and the beast inside the egg.
Sensing her gaze, the beast brought its tail up and pointed the tip at a small circle in front of the egg, just enough for Ina to stand in. With nothing else to do, she followed the supposedly demand and stepped inside. As soon as her whole body was inside, the beast touched the egg before emitting strange grunting and noises, akin to a ritual ...
Bang! Bang! Bang!
Ina tried to rush out but a transparent wall confined her inside the space. She tried shooting the thing but only banging sounds could be made. Ina knew something was up with the egg, and she suspected that the beast would use her for something. She quickly felt her strength draining away and with her eyes, she could see it concentrating inside the youngling. Just before her eyelids shut themselves and sent her into darkness, she could heard an elderly male voice from the black beast in front of her.
"A gift, for a friend."
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Sometime later
The thin surface of the eggs burst open and yellow liquids flowed out of gap and eroded the ground beneath. A black thing crawled out, making a plop on the liquified floor. Its breathing hastened up before plateauing at a sustainable rate. Its body, still wet from the acidic liquid, trembled and shaken, trying to stand up but to no avail. With only 3 pairs of small weak legs that allowed crawling available, the creature could only pitifully dragged its body to its first meal. the black beast corpse.
Slowly but surely, the creature approached the black corpse, its pace hesitant, before feasting on the giant meal. It hummed in satisfaction as the sweet, rich meat entered its mouth. After eaten half the main body, the creature exited the corpse and lied down beside it. Its armor started shedding, leaving behind a molt. The creature could feel itself getting stronger and cheered by hitting its tail onto the ground below.
After a significant number of the process happening, with 3 major evolution that result in returning into an egg form albeit smaller, the final product was the black beast half the size of the old one. Sensing that the time was right, red cracks appear on the skin, pulsing as if a heart was pumping blood through them. A few seconds later, what remained was not the beast but rather a young girl approaching her 10th birthday with black hair reaching over the back a little and charcoal eyes.
The girl, Ina, gave the remained armor of the beast a bow, a grateful bow for the final present. She got on the elevator and pulled the red string attached. The elevator started going up, inching Ina closer and closer to the end.
"Gluttony means the sin of overeating. "
Now she knew what to do with the boy above the ground. The elevator stopped neatly at the surface, giving her a direct line of sight to her target.
"So you get back, did you kill it? Thank goodness, did you take its head to me? I needed the head for my magic. Why aren't you talking? "
Facing a silent Ina, Gluttony could only remain curious for a minute before seeing her eyes.
"Oh fuck. Hey, he said that you should know the gift will become a skill of ..."
Gluttony never finished the sentence as Ina had turned backed into the beast and swallowed the boy whole. The boy was favorless, just like the phantoms of ideas and concepts in this place. She could feel something in her filled up and become completed as if it had found its destined pair. As soon as she devoured Gluttony, the sky started cracking like glass before giving way to the eternal night and a split red moon. The dome started to fade into nothingness, the ground started sinking down the eternal darkness and the air turned somber, awaiting the finale. Ina gazed emotionlessly at the world she had spent her years in before letting herself go with the flow of causality and chaos.
"Let this dream ... ends here."