Kaiju- Battlefield Surgeon

by Matt Dinniman

  It didn’t help during the death sequence. I learned that the hard way.

  I’d lost access to Mary and Ruth, but we now had full-time access to the television. The story of the serial killer and the international conspiracy surrounding him dominated the headlines for a few more days before it started to sink into the background of all the other horrible news of the world. The media seemed to believe that Hamish Yeltsin, aka Frankenstein’s Monster, was the ringleader. Clara laughed long and hard at that.

  “The fact it took them this long to catch that idiot is proof they don’t know what the hell they’re talking about,” she said.

  The news didn’t mention Anatoly at all other than some vague references to the co-conspirators. They didn’t seem to have any sort of handle on the nature of the conspiracy itself. A few additional arrests had been made, however, including one in Omaha, Nebraska.

  It appeared SmashSouth was right to be afraid. I held out hope that he’d eventually cave and tell the investigators about us. Clara seemed skeptical.

  “They all have dead-man switches,” she explained. “They press a button, and their entire rigs fry themselves. Guys like SmashSouth, they know enough to keep their activities online. Nobody even knows we exist.”

  I growled at the thought. “Why use us at all? The AI NPCs they use for Dominion of Blades just got an upgrade. It’s getting hard to tell the difference between them and real players. Surely it’s a lot easier and safer for them to use an AI for whatever sick shit they do in here. That way, it’s not even illegal.”

  Clara shrugged. “I think that might’ve been the original plan. But you can still tell when they’re NPCs. And the clients, the whole allure of this arrangement is that they’re fucking over a real person. They don’t just get access to a ‘consumable.’ They know their real name, get access to the feed of their family freaking out. One of these guys. The Mexican cannibal. Paulo was his real name. He played a groundling last season.” A groundling was a dwarf-like creature with no neck. Not as squat as a mole man. I could’ve picked that race when I signed up.

  “He had a thing for teenage boys. He loved fucking them, impaling them on a giant spit, cooking them, and then eating them. His consumable was his neighbor’s kid. Anatoly’s team swept the kid away, took him out of Tucson where they lived. Paulo used his own house in the real world as the headquarters for the search party. The kid had to watch his mom go into Paulo’s house every day. It was some fucked up shit. The boy played a brownie. Paulo didn’t like that so much. Most of these guys want their consumables to play as humans. Anatoly kept insisting the next update would allow multiples of the same species to play, but it never happened. Paulo ended up quitting because of it. When they reset the game, he refused to roll a new character. They gave the boy to the Canadian after that.” She shuddered. “They never last long when he gets a hold of them.”

  “Who is this Canadian guy you keep mentioning?” I asked.

  “You don’t want to know. Hopefully, he’s been arrested or is lying low.” She shuddered again and wrapped her arms around herself. “He’s the only one that…”

  She didn’t finish her thought, and no prodding would get it out of her. Clara was like that. Chatty one moment, not willing to talk the next. She never talked about herself or her past. I gathered she could speak Korean, but I didn’t get the impression that she was Korean. I had no idea how old she was.

  I did, however, come to suspect that she was insane. That she had an actual, certifiable psychotic disorder that twisted her sense of reality, and that she also had multiple mood disorders that played havoc on her personal emotions. She had a sense about her, that of a grenade, ready to explode at any moment. When we fed Banksy, I was in constant fear that she’d crack and would rip my guts out again.

  She never did, though. She went about the feeding process with grim determination.

  That last time we fed Banksy, everything changed. I cut myself open, and Clara shoved the meat into my gut. Banksy gobbled it up, and I prepared my Reconstitute spell.

  Banksy, Gut Hook, is now level 5.

  Dad. I feel funny.

  Dad? He’d always called me “daddy” until this point. He sounded older now, too. I prepared to heal myself, but the menu disappeared before I could cast. It was replaced with a new window.

  Your Gut Hook is evolving!

  You must choose between the following:

  Cerebral Maggot

  Blood Squirmer

  Hook Slayer

  Warning: Your choice is final.

  Warning: You have 60 seconds to make a decision! If you do not choose, a random selection will be made.

  What the hell was this? I had no idea this was going to happen. Banksy hadn’t warned me. All he’d said was he could leave my body once he hit level 5.

  My health continued to plummet, but I couldn’t cast it until I made a choice. Damnit. I’d never have time to read all of these.

  Hastily, I clicked on Cerebral Maggot.

  Your worm ceases to physically grow, and it permanently remains within your body. After attaching itself to your brain stem, you gain access to one additional school of magic of your choosing. In addition, your acumen is granted a permanent +5 and your charm a permanent +3.

  However, your familiar is even more ravenous than before. Its sustenance requirements are doubled.

  That sounded great, but the whole point of this was to get Banksy big enough to live outside of my body.

  My health was almost out. I didn’t have time to read the next two choices. I didn’t know which one to pick. I was afraid if I died, it’d pick the first one for me.

  I slammed down on the choice that sounded the most like a physical build.

  You have chosen Hook Slayer.

  The menu disappeared, and I quickly cast Reconstitute. I relaxed as my health bar slowly started to climb back up.

  Dad. I don’t feel so good.

  I felt my chest explode.

  ***

  You have died 11 times.

  I rolled on my side, the now-familiar sensation of fire still licking at me. I held back a sob. Christ. It was no wonder Clara had gone crazy. I was going crazy, too. I had to be.

  Warning! Your familiar does not appear to fit within its current regeneration spot. Keeping this spot may result in injury to either yourself or your familiar. Please review your available familiar regeneration options:

  Keep current regeneration spot: The digestive tract of Player Duke.

  Mirror your own regeneration: (Unavailable. Requires permission and brand from Player Anatoly for this location.)

  Create a new regeneration spot with a brand: (Unavailable until both player and familiar reach level 10.)

  Regenerate in pet carrier: (Unavailable. Requires pet carrier.)

  Regenerate within the Shrill. (Unavailable until your first deep dive within the Shrill.)

  Upon regeneration of either yourself or your familiar, your pet will attempt to home in on your location. If it can not reach you due to distance or other factors, it will wander freely unless you obtain a pet carrier. If a pet carrier is equipped, it will teleport to your location after a countdown based on the quality and level of the pet carrier. Some pet carriers may be used as their own regeneration spots.

  I read the notification three times. Shit. I was screwed until we both hit level 10 and I found a brand. Or until I found a pet carrier. My only choice was to keep Banksy’s current regeneration spot, which meant every time he died, my chest would explode.

  Two steps forward, one step back. Jesus.

  “Have you ever seen the movie Alien?” Clara asked after I sat up. She made a chest-bursting motion with her hands. “I’m not gonna lie. That was pretty awesome.”

  I barely heard her. I stared at the creature coiled up at her feet.

  Banksy. He’d been tiny when I first swallowed him. Half an inch. The size of a fingernail. The level 5 hook slayer was now about as long and as thick as my arm. He was the color of pale fl
esh, though as I watched, he rippled with a flash of rose, as if he had his own parasites within. He lifted his head at my arrival.

  If he had eyes, I didn’t see any. Still, he turned toward me with purpose, and I had no doubt he could see me.

  Hi Dad, he said, still in my mind. The outside world is very big and cold.

  The words Familiar – Player Duke appeared over his head.

  His cone-shaped head opened up, revealing four triangular flaps and several circular rows of sharp teeth. It was like a flower bud opening and closing. It reminded me of those sandworms from the Dune movies they’d made a few years back.

  “This isn’t the outside world,” I said.

  I tried to eat your body after you died, but it was still gross. You taste of rotted flesh. I won’t ever be able to eat you. I’m already feeling hungry. Let us hunt.

  I turned my gaze toward the chair where I usually sat for our feedings. My corpse remained there, my ruin of a chest gaping open like a baked potato. It looked as if a grenade had exploded out of me. My foot was chewed off where Banksy had tried to eat me.

  That’s going to happen every time he dies.

  “He’s pretty cute,” Clara said. She cocked her head. “Are you talking to him telepathically?” She looked down at the parasite. “What’s the matter? Can’t you talk?”

  Banksy’s triangle head looked back and forth between Clara and me. The four mouth flaps opened and closed a few times with a wet sound. Gooey tendrils of… worm saliva? Something, stringed out between the mouth openings.

  He made a coughing sound.

  “I think I can talk,” he said.

  Clara clapped her hands with delight. She patted him on the head. “Good boy! Good boy! I like you better than Ginger already. That stupid boa constrictor could talk, but she never did. Stuck up bitch.”

  Banksy looked up at her with something akin to adoration, and to my astonishment, a long tongue snaked out of his mouth and hung loosely to the side, slobber now flowing freely. He started to pant like he was a damn golden retriever.

  I pulled up my familiar menu and examined Banksy’s new attributes.

  Banksy. Level 5 Hook Slayer. Pre-Mature Stage.

  Upon evolution to hook slayer, your worm loses all of his previous abilities, (Sap Energy, Strengthen). Although they are bereft of surgical talents, Hook Slayers grow exponentially in size and strength upon level-up, making them some of the most fearsome melee fighters available. They are voracious eaters, and they must feed multiple times a day. They gain mount status at level 13. They gain the ability to burrow at level 15. They reach full maturity upon level 25. Upon level 25, the formidable Hook Slayer must evolve again. Either way, the resulting familiar will be so physically massive it can only use an open field or a guardian as a regeneration spot. As a result, you may choose your associated guardian—the Shrill—as your familiar’s regeneration spot without a brand after your familiar’s first deep dive within the kaiju.

  I wondered what the definition of “physically massive” was.

  “Can we go kill something now?” Banksy asked. He waved his head back and forth. “Daaaad. Come on. I’m bored!”

  Clara looked at me, eyebrow raised. “You’ve created a monster.”

  Chapter 14

  We had no choice. We had to leave, and we did so an hour later. The number of crabs crawling around the base was getting thinner and thinner, and it quickly became clear that they weren’t proper sustenance for Banksy anyway. We waited until one of Bast’s calm phases, and I peeled open the door. Banksy rushed out, practically bowling me over as he leaped off the platform and dove straight into the river of kaiju crap. He thrashed about, killing the handful of remaining crabs. They attempted to swarm, but Banksy was lightning quick, snapping back and forth, crunching them delightedly like a fox set upon a chicken coop.

  I received a token amount of experience each time he killed something. I’d have to sit down and figure it out, but I guessed it was about 10% the experience I’d receive if I killed them myself. Actually, it was every time he ate something. There was a difference. He didn’t gain experience by killing. Only by eating. Luckily, I still pulled souls whether he ate them or not, as long as they were dead. I topped up my points from the dead crabs.

  Healing him was going to be a problem. Neither Clara nor I currently had a spell that would work on him. It wasn’t until I hit level 20 would I have access to a spell entitled Heal Familiar. Level 20 seemed so, so far away. He slowly regenerated health on his own, but that didn’t help us amid a battle. Apparently fae like Clara had a skill that would allow her to heal him once he obtained mount status, but that wouldn’t happen for several levels.

  Banksy popped up out of the river looking up at us. “Come on!” he called.

  I called up my map of the body, keeping a wary eye on the train-sized parasites ripping their way through Bast.

  “So what’s the plan, boss?” Clara asked.

  “We try to get out. If he follows his usual schedule, we have about an hour before Bast wakes up, and we don’t want to be sloshing around in here when he does.”

  “When she does,” Clara said. “Bast is a girl.”

  “That lion has a mane like a boy lion.”

  Clara shrugged. “Maybe she’s confused. But she’s definitely a she. Her insides are all girl.”

  I glanced again at the map. “Huh. I guess you’re right.”

  Sure enough, the distinctive pattern of the female reproductive system was discernable now that I knew what I was looking at.

  “Anyway, our best bet is to go this way.” I pointed roughly west, which was normally the direction down when she was awake. According to my map, Bast currently lay on her side, and the shortest path out of the monster was directly through the intestine wall, through the abdominal muscles, a thin layer of fat, and then her pelt, emerging right through her belly. The total distance was maybe 150 meters, though I didn’t know how difficult it would be to get through the muscle. The larger parasites seemed to avoid that area. I didn’t know if that was a good thing or not.

  I widened my radar sweep of items in need of healing, and the way looked clear. The entire exterior of Bast glowed red. I didn’t know what that meant, but it couldn’t be good. Also, every time I pulled up the map I received a warning about Bast being in dire health. What would happen if the guardian died? Could they die?

  I asked Clara, and she shrugged. “SmashSouth’s guardian died all the time. We sat in the base, and everything jostled around for a bit, and then it’d wake back up like ten minutes later. I don’t think it’s a big deal. I know it didn’t heal it back up all the way, though. It might move the kaiju to its own respawn location, but I’m not sure. I was always getting warnings about it being in poor health whenever we stepped outside. The parasites were much worse in that thing than in here. I just knew we weren’t supposed to go out of the base while it was dead.”

  I returned to planning our escape. If this path didn’t work, our next best bet was to travel the twisty intestinal river and climb right out of the kaiju’s butthole. That was a much longer path, and it was a direction I wanted to avoid. A thick parasitic infestation glowed near that area.

  We dropped into the muck. Banksy swirled about my feet as we trudged our way to the wall. Clara clung onto my arm. She was up to her chest in the kaiju crap.

  “I can’t see shit in here,” she said. “No pun intended. Do you have a light?”

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “I can see in the dark.”

  We reached the wall. I called up my surgery menu to see if it’d let me use Incision.

  I clicked on the skill.

  Draw a line.

  With my hand, I made a somewhat-straight, horizontal line above the waterline.

  The skin glowed red and separated, peeling open with a slurping sound.

  The world around me rumbled. The whole area suddenly glowed red.

  She was waking up.

  “I have a numbing skill in my surgery
menu,” Clara said. “We should probably use that next time.” Her hand glowed, and the red eased.

  “Good idea,” I grumbled.

  She still refused to tell me much about what she could and couldn’t do, and I wasn’t certain why. She refused to offer almost any information, even helpful information such as this, unless I asked directly. And even then sometimes she refused.

  “Okay,” I said, pulling myself through the open wound. “You two get in here. I’m going to seal it, and you’re going to numb the area again if it doesn’t take too much magic.”

  I slipped through the wound, the sensation oddly like trying to slip under the covers of a tightly-made bed, only the sheets were made of thick slices of wet roast beef.

  Surgical talents used soul points just like regular magic. I was tempted to not seal the wound to preserve my points, but I didn’t want her waking up. Cauterize took 5% of my points, and Incision was based on the length of the cut. The short slit appeared to have taken another 5%. Unless Banksy or I could kill something, it was going to be tight.

  We were pressed between the pulsating intestinal wall and the sinewy abdominal muscles. We had to slide ourselves along, heading back toward the stomach and liver area. Too far in the other direction, and we’d have to cut ourselves through the bladder, and I’d have to repair the kidney as well. There was only a small area where we could go without the danger of cutting through a major organ or artery.

  The veins and arteries that snaked around the muscles and the outside of the intestine glowed with a subtle luminescence, bright enough that my Frame Vision was randomly turning itself on and off. Clara’s large eyes glowed in the darkness, and I knew she could see.

  Clara opened her bag and popped a piece of candy into her mouth.

  “That’s how you refill your magic, isn’t it?” I asked as we slid along. “Eating.” She’d been hoarding food since she’d arrived. Her food box had a countdown timer of fifteen minutes or so, and she’d completely filled her storage with all the food she could get. Everything that came out of it was some sort of candy or treat, given seemingly at random. She’d tossed away or simply eaten most of the bigger items like the candy apples and the rice crispy treats. The smaller wrapped candies that came out more rarely went straight into her bag.