Kaiju- Battlefield Surgeon

by Matt Dinniman

  Scanning…

  A wall of text filled my screen.

  Level 6 Dirofilariasis Infestation

  This infection is worsening.

  Time to level 7: 1 day, 23 hours, 58 minutes.

  Warning: Your antiparasitic skill may not be adequate for this infection.

  Warning: Guardian Moritasgus’s effective strength is reduced by 30% due to this infestation. Moritasgus’s total strength reduction: 85%

  Warning: Guardian Moritasgus is bound in a trap.

  Recommended treatment:

  Antiparasitic followed by Detoxification and Cleanse. Vaccines recommended. Warning! You are out of stock on vaccines.

  Warning: due to the strength of the infection you must be in direct contact with a pulmonary vein to administer the antiparasitic.

  The infection was at level 6. It had been at level 5 just a few minutes earlier. I didn’t know what that meant, but it had probably worsened because of my presence. This was typical game stuff. The mere existence of a player had a tendency to set things into motion.

  My soul power was still topped up from my recent resurrection, and my health hadn’t had much time to tick down. It seemed the diagnosis spell had cost next to nothing.

  If I wanted to heal this guardian of its worm problem, I had to cast a series of healing spells. The thing was, I had no reason to want to heal it. Not really. The less I did to be noticeable, the better. Jenk was still out there and nearby. I knew I received experience when I healed. And healing these monsters was the point of this whole damn game, so I’d eventually have to start doing it a lot. But the last time I’d done it—during the character creation process—I’d ended up unleashing a torrent of demons on myself. No thank you. Not until after this stupid day ended and my debt went away.

  “That’s the oblation chamber,” Jazz shouted, pointing at the boxy hut at the end of the bridge. Her voice came at me, amplified at full volume through the speakers on her mech. Even then I could barely hear what she was saying. “That is where they brought Gulch. The worms are especially active today. Come. I will need your help, demon. Prepare your weapons.”

  She rushed forward, moving smoothly across the heaving bridge as her mech feet turned to tracks, locking into place. She pulled the giant, metallic block off her back and dangled it in her right hand.

  Shit. I looked one more time over the edge. I swallowed and pulled my gun. I tentatively followed behind, far enough back so I wouldn’t get clobbered by that flail if she started swinging it around. It was difficult to keep my balance, and she quickly outpaced me.

  She disappeared into the small building before I’d even crossed half the bridge.

  The light of the heart chamber halved the moment Jazz disappeared, and my Frame Vision activated. I looked down again, and now I could see the full outline of the heart. I gulped. The pulsing muscle had to be 80 feet across and 100 feet deep. The entirety of the organ, outside and in, was filled with the worms. I had no idea how the muscle worked at all, so choked with parasites.

  A pair of flashes brought my attention back to the bridge. As I came closer, I realized the small building was attached directly to the exterior of the aortic valve. It hovered a mere ten feet above the curved top of the heart. The bridge and the building were kept relatively steady using similar magic as Anatoly’s base. The writhing mass of worms reached all the way to the bottom of the building. Some of them even curved up the sides.

  Another flash came from within the building. A fourth flash pulsed. The came light from underneath the closed door and a hole in the roof.

  This was all game setup, I knew. I took another step toward the door. I was about to walk into something...

  The door flew off its hinges as Jazz rocketed backward and out of the building. She hit the bridge hard, rolling to a stop just in front of me. I fell onto my back, and I scrambled, clutching onto the slat with my mechanical left hand as the bridge heaved. The entire top half of my body dangled over the edge. The writhing worms below were mere feet away. They seemed to sense my presence, and they undulated, the whole mass rising toward me.

  I pulled myself back up. Jazz’s mech was face down on the slats. The boiler rattled. It’s gonna blow, I thought. I need to get out of here. The giant flail was still clutched in her right hand, but it dangled off the side of the bridge. I watched in horror as a group of worms reached the square hunk of metal. They climbed, worming their way up as the whole mech started to slide, pulled toward the edge of the bridge. It was a race to see what would happen first, would the mech get pulled off the edge before the mass reached the slats to overwhelm the bridge?

  Jazz emerged, pulling herself out from underneath the mech, climbing up the arm, monkey-like. She jumped onto the sliding back of the mech, screaming something. She pulled a wrench out of a slot on the shoulder, smacked something, and with a twist, the whole right arm fell from the mech. The flail and worms plummeted away.

  She then moved frantically toward the boiler, which glowed an ominous shade of red.

  Jazz was shouting at me, pointing toward the building. I could not hear her.

  A second mech emerged, coming from the missing front door of the small building.

  It was Madame Throb. But I caught a slight difference in the name floating over her head:

  Madame Throb (Host) – Mechanized Sentry Leader of the Protectorate Templar (Level 26)

  Host? What did that mean?

  It didn’t take me long to figure it out.

  A single, impossibly-long white worm was attached to the top of her head. It threaded over the top of her mech and reached right into the top of the cockpit. Behind her, hundreds of worms began to emerge from the building.

  Madame Throb’s eyes were gone. As I watched in horror, dozens of small worms started to slide out of the empty eye holes. The worm thing was controlling her.

  “You have breached the agreement!” the worm thing screamed through Throb’s loudspeakers. It pointed at me. The mech held a large, blunderbuss-like gun. At the same time, Jazz scrambled off the back of her downed mech. The boiler continued to glow red. She rushed back toward me, screaming and waving her arms.

  “I have no idea what the hell you’re talking about,” I screamed back.

  “You presented a child! This child escaped to where we cannot reach. Bring him to us, and all will be well. Do not do as we ask, and we shall choke this so-called god to death! Deals are sacred to our kind. Break this pact, and all of your gods shall suffer our wrath!”

  Another quest notification appeared in my interface. This one was different than the previous ones. Usually there was a chime, and the quest disappeared into a folder. This one glowed yellow and was persistent on my screen. I couldn’t click it away until I read it.

  Timed Quest!

  You have fifteen minutes to complete this task.

  Option A. Gulch has escaped the grasp of the dirofilaria. Capture him and present him to the parasites. Completing this task will reward you with a permanent +20% strength bonus to all controlled guardians. All dirofilariasis-type infections will cease to cause strength reductions. However, your standing with all Groundlings will have a permanent 10% deficit.

  Option B. Kill the dirofilariasis infection and free Gulch. Doing so will cause Jazz the groundling to swear allegiance. She and a fully-armored defense mech will join your party as a mercenary. However, all guardians infected with dirofilariasis-type parasites will receive a permanent 10% strength reduction in addition to the existing effect of the parasites.

  Failing to complete either of these options will result in a permanent 20% strength reduction to all worm-based strength deficits.

  “Goddamnit,” I muttered. I’d stumbled onto a compulsory quest.

  A 15-minute timer appeared in my vision, counting down. The timer mirrored itself directly above the glowing-red boiler of Jazz’s abandoned mech.

  Jazz was at my side now, frantically screaming. I still could not hear her.

  I read my choices aga
in. Either way, I had to find Gulch. Once I did, I had to decide what to do with him. If I gave him up to the worms, it sounded like heartworms would cease to be a problem and all controlled guardians would be stronger. If saved the kid, I’d gain Jazz as a wingman. But any guardian I wanted to control would be that much more difficult to heal. All guardians would receive a 10% strength reduction.

  I didn’t know how much of a big deal that was, but it seemed pretty damned important. I had the sense I’d stumbled onto something major, a hidden boss battle, something that regular players of this game would go out of their way to seek out. Either way, if I did nothing, the penalty was obscene.

  I didn’t know if the Throb-thing could hear me or not.

  “Where did he go?” I called. I eyed the glowing boiler nervously. It appeared it would blow at any moment, not in fourteen minutes. I suspected if I touched or shot it, it wouldn’t wait.

  The worm-controlled mech rolled backward into the hut. She beckoned at me.

  The worms pulled back, settling on top of the heart. They ceased their reaching for the hut and bridge. The bridge settled.

  “Let’s get your kid,” I shouted down at Jazz. I turned and ran toward the building. I didn’t know if she followed or not.

  I still had no idea what I was going to do.

  I rushed through the door of the oblation chamber, and I stepped into hell.

  Entering Oblation Chamber.

  All exterior sounds ceased, replaced with something much more terrible. There was some sort of magic here, protecting the space. I could still feel the thudding of the heart in the sticky, metallic floor. It was only slightly better lit than the area outside. A dingy, yellow light seeped in the room, lighting the chamber just enough to present the horrors held within.

  A red mist clouded the air. Blood, I realized. It a matter of moments, I was covered, dripping.

  The chamber was bigger than I’d anticipated. It was about 500 square feet if I had to guess, and perfectly round. Holes peppered the rusted metal floor, holes just large enough for the hundreds of worms that pushed their way up through them.

  I was instantly reminded of the night thieves, the worms who wore dead babies as shells. This was similar, but not exactly the same.

  These worms rose vertically in the tall chamber, all reaching about ten feet off the ground. They waved lazily, as if entranced, wafting back and forth like sea anemones caught in a mild current. Each worm clutched a single groundling child, held upside down. The children were each about two or three years old, all younger than Gulch. The round mouths of the worms grasped onto the crown of each child, covering the hair and eyes and usually the nose. The arms and legs of the children were rigid, their legs pointing straight upwards, their arms outward, cross-shaped.

  The children were paralyzed, I realized. They were hit with the same type of freezing-in-place paralysis spell that I’d been hit with during the amplification ceremony. I knew this because their bodies remained rigid, but they could still use and move their mouths. The blood that permeated this chamber only reached about six or seven feet up, more fog than a mist. The worms seemed immune to the stuff. Their bodies remained white, but the walls did not, leaving a clear line. The mist did not appear to reach the children, though their bodies were all stained red, as if the chamber sometimes filled with blood, like a tide.

  There were about 75 groundling children in the room, all hovering above me like inverted crosses. Each and every one of them screamed and cried.

  Their ragged bodies, some half decomposed with brown and black bone showing through rotted, sloughing skin on their legs and arms, all remained rigid. But these children were alive, and they were in constant, unrelenting pain.

  “What…” I began. Holy shit.

  This is too much. This is too much.

  “That one,” Jazz said, pointing toward a particularly-decomposed child at the far end of the chamber. I hadn’t realized she’d followed me into the room. She looked to be in a state of shock. Her eyes were wild, her words slow, defeated. She shouted loud enough for me to hear. “That’s my uncle. My mother’s brother. He has been here for 80 seasons. Their bodies cease to grow, but it takes them decades to die, decades to properly decompose. That is our deal with the worms. We give them our damaged children, and they do not kill our god.”

  “You should have just killed him,” I said, my eyes drinking in the room.

  “Stonegate wanted to,” Jazz said. “He wanted to spare him this. But I am stubborn. A mother loves her child, wants to protect him. But sometimes that love is a curse. Now my husband is dead, and my child is damned.”

  Madame Throb stood in the back of the room, silent, stiff. The normally-white and gold machine dripped red.

  “Where is he?” I asked.

  The mech pointed up. “He scaled the wall of the chamber, and he disappeared.”

  A round hole at the top of the chamber revealed nothing but darkness.

  I nodded, impressed. That kid could sure climb. He would’ve had to scramble up one of the worms and leaped off the body of a paralyzed groundling in order to have pulled that off. “Okay then,” I said. I shouldered my gun. “I’ll find him.” I had 10 minutes.

  Jazz clutched onto my leg. “When you find him, do not go back into the chamber. Keep climbing. The boiler on my mech is going to fail. The explosion will kill everything nearby, including me and these worms. I cannot stop it. The release valve is broken. Take care of my child, worm surgeon.”

  I nodded. I still didn’t know what I was going to do. But I had a thought. I opened up my menus, scrolled to my skills, and re-activated Wicked Meat. I looked around the room, first focusing on Madame Throb, then Jazz. I took note of the results and switched it back off.

  I shot my left hand out, easily reaching the hole at the top of the chamber. I pulled myself up, struggling to wrench my bulk to the roof.

  Entering Heart Region.

  Once outside, the rushing, thumping sounds returned. Relief flooded me. Anything to get that terrible screaming and crying out of my head. Darkness enveloped me, and my Frame Vision activated, turning everything into a wire frame.

  Eight minutes left.

  Massive, rushing tubes surrounded me. The temple was nestled in the space between the aorta and the vena cava, according to my map, which looked like the vein I needed to grasp onto in order to administer the antiparasitic. The vein was as thick as a grain silo.

  Okay, Gulch. Where did you go?

  I looked around. The kid could climb like a monkey, but I didn’t think he’d be able to get far. Especially in the dark. He wouldn’t have gone down, not toward the worms. But with all these veins and arteries, there were literally dozens of directions he could have gone.

  “Damnit,” I muttered.

  I had 14 skill points left after leveling up to 17 in my ill-fated attack on the templar guards. I had multiple tracking-themed skills available. I hadn’t spent too much time looking at them, and I cursed myself now for not reading up on everything I could.

  I quickly pulled up the menu, glancing through all my choices. I focused on something that seemed helpful. It cost 3 skill points, but I would have to level it up twice to get it to work during deep dive. I read the description. I nodded to myself. This would work. It would probably be helpful for my next quest, too. The one to find the quantum mechanic inside of the Shrill.

  Track the Lost

  Aids in the finding of lost livestock and NPCs. Does not work on mobs. Activating the skill shows all NPC and missing livestock passage related to active quests. Second level increases time and distance available to track. Third level adds deep-dive and aquatic support. Fourth level requires a bionic upgrade and adds support and tracking through portals.

  It cost seven points to get the skill to level three. I didn’t hesitate further. I selected it, scrolled through my menu, and turned it on.

  Six minutes left.

  It only took me a moment to figure out how the skill worked. Sure enough, a glowi
ng track appeared on the ground. The track followed up an angled vein, this one only as thick as an oak tree, splitting off toward another branch. Sitting at the branch, huddled between two pulsing veins was the boy, about fifty feet away.

  He lay on his side, his short legs pulled up to his chest. Even at this distance, I could see he was crying.

  I awkwardly pulled myself up the side of the vein, which angled up at a 45-degree angle. I found I could bunch the hard, plastic-like flesh of the tube in my hand, creating handholds. When I did this, I could feel the rush of the blood under my hands.

  The moment I touched the vein, my surgery menu returned. This time two different available tasks glowed. Antiparasitic and BloodBorne. I had no idea what BloodBorne did, but when I hovered over it, several branches of text appeared. A quick glance told me these were destinations within the body, nearby purple waypoint locations that needed healing. After I moment I realized it was a fast travel spell. I could use it to get to places within a kaiju using their circulatory system.

  I pulled myself to the next branch. It swayed like a rope. On my hands and knees, I crawled over to where Gulch sat, huddled. He did not move at my approach. The booming roar of the heartbeat had eased once the quest had started. It was still loud, but not nearly as much as before.

  We were about twenty feet higher than the top of the oblation chamber. Directly below was the bridge. I had a bird’s-eye view of the red-hot mech. It glowed like a beacon, the only real illumination in here. My Frame Vision stayed engaged unless I looked directly down. I had no idea what the blast radius was going to be, but we were probably well within it.

  Four minutes.

  I clutched onto a rope-like vein with my mechanical left hand to steady myself. Once again, my surgical options appeared. I left the window open.

  “Gulch,” I said. “It’s me. Your mom is down there.”

  He looked up, rubbing his eyes. “She’s a liar,” he said. “She told me I’d never come down here. We trained for it, but she said it was a game. I’d never have to really do it. I want my dad.”