DO NOT LET HIM FREE.
You are his owner. He must obey your commands. He will not appear to be under your control, but he is as long as he remains in his lantern.
If he is freed, he will return to his work, which is to further hack the transport gazebos to his own dark purpose. He wishes to use the system to invade Medina. So far, the protective magic has held the demons at bay. Even though they don’t deserve our mercy, Medina is still our home.
I have written a program that will reset and repair the damaged transport gazebos. Every gazebo repaired using this method will resume normal function and will also forever lock out the demons. I have transferred the program to a chip in my brain. You much remove my head and bring it to the city of Necroshire. Within this city is a shop called Necroshire Mystical Upcycle Emporium. Bring my head there, and they will do the rest.
Make haste, brother or sister. The fate of the heavens is in your hands.
Bernadette.
I read the note again.
It was clear was I was supposed to do. I was supposed to lop off Bernadette’s head, use the scroll to get to Necroshire, and then upcycle parts of Bernadette’s brain. After that I’d have the ability to repair any transport gazebo I came across.
However, this quest was designed to be used by someone who didn’t already have the Upcycle spell. I turned on my Wicked Meat skill and examined Bernadette’s body.
A moment later, I loaded up my scratchpad and wrote down the 15 different body parts I needed to cut out of my late aunt.
I pulled out the amplification knife and went to work.
***
“What the hell is wrong with you, mate?” Count Fronz said from his cage, looking down at me with horror. “Are you some sort of crazed butcher? By Baal’s left tit, you’re worse than Beleth.”
I had my aunt’s left kidney, her right eye, her liver, her stomach, and multiple small glands and random muscles all lined up on the floor. The room looked like someone had put half a stick of dynamite into a corpse and let it blow. I also had her brain. The brain had added itself to my quest inventory the moment I touched her head. No cutting required. Everything else came out the hard way.
Of all the treasures in the room, it turned out her body was the greatest one. I went through each item, all with a 0% chance of rejection. I would have to go set myself up outside of the upper glandular area and do each upcycle in turn. I’d heal myself by killing pig spiders. Once I was topped up, I’d repeat.
It wouldn’t let me use my Upcycle on Bernadette’s brain. I had to follow the quest path, which meant I had to use the scroll. I’d do that last.
“All right, buddy,” I said to Count Fronz. “You’re coming with me.”
The small demon protested and swore as I stuffed the lantern into my bag. I’d had to remove a couple books and a couple other odds and ends I’d collected on the way to make it fit. But once I was all packed up, I set out toward the upper areas of the Shrill.
Chapter 42
Upcycle complete!
Operation: success!
Congratulations! Your body did not reject the upcycle!
Race trait Life Tap has been removed.
I sighed. That was the last of them. I grasped my Epiviper, turned the corner, and killed three of the pig spiders. The soul power leeched into me. I healed, then shot one more to refill my bar. The remaining pig spiders did not pursue me.
I’d received multiple attribute level-ups from the array of items in Bernadette’s body. I only chose ones with 100% success chances and ones that didn’t remove any of my skills. My pack was now covered with the “I was a good boy!” patches.
After all of that, my stats looked like:
Strength: 26
Acumen: 30 (+2 from armor. +10 from amulet)
Durability: 25
Deftness: 15 (+1 from kneepads)
Charm: 10
In addition, I gained Darkness Vision without losing my Frame Vision, I gained a very useful skill called Lemegeton, and best of all, thanks to the replacement of my liver, I removed Life Tap. Life Tap was the race trait that caused me to be constantly losing health. The liver replacement actually cost two durability points, but I’d net gained one durability point thanks to the replacement of both thigh muscles.
Lemegeton allowed me to examine the traits, skills, and abilities of demon royalty. Upon obtaining the skill, I pulled Count Fronz from my pack and tested it out.
Count Fronz
Rank 46 in the demonic hierarchy. A vassal of King Vinea.
May be evoked to perform Brightness, Repair, and can identity ingredients for alchemy. Requires Evocation level 1.
Has two forms: Hackberry Emperor Caterpillar or Thorn Carcass.
Interesting. I wondered what a “thorn carcass” looked like.
The next part of the quest required me to use the scroll to travel to Necroshire. But first there was something I needed to do.
I had to wait several hours before I could safely travel within the guardian. I finished my last Upcycle at the end of the Shrill’s calm phase. He returned to the edge of his territory to once again fight against the glazers just as I dragged myself into my base.
To my surprise, something different happened this time. While I had no sense of where we were, I could tell right away that the fight outside had ended much more quickly than normal. The Shrill changed to his egg shape and started moving a full hour earlier than usual.
I wasn’t certain, but I believed with his added strength, he’d managed to thoroughly trounce King Vinea’s glazers and was now moving off toward the rift to join the rest of his kaiju friends.
I realized something else, then. It was probably obvious, but for some reason my brain just hadn’t registered it. That was what we were supposed to be doing all along. The missing kaiju and guardians who weren’t already near the rift were supposed to be healed, rescued, whatever, in order to line them up for the final assault on the world of hell. You needed at least four to beat the final boss, but the more, the better. And most, if not all, of them needed to be in the area when the assault began.
Anatoly, Jenk, and that Frankenstein’s Monster guy had managed to somehow pull it off once with three guardians. But as Clara had repeatedly reminded me, that was a next-to-impossible task. They’d done it because they needed to reset the game, but I had the sense that Anatoly wanted to do it just to see if he could. And according to Clara, they only won because they’d utilized a cheat.
Once the Shrill moved to his egg shape, I left my base and struck out toward the end of the distant tentacle. When he moved like this, his interior bounced around like the bed of a pickup truck with no shocks. It was still better than Bast or Moritasgus.
BloodBorne took me most of the way. The bulk of the tentacles were a thick tunnel of muscle surrounded by a fluid-filled sac. The long shaft constantly changed diameter, sometimes tight to the point where I feared I’d be squeezed to death. Safe pockets appeared every ten meters or so. Lines of nerves spread throughout the muscles, in, above, and below like some sort of nightmare tangle of computer wires.
The testicles were a pair of glands at the very tip of the tentacle, nestled on one side of a fatty pocket. Each sac was actually a multi-chambered organ, unlike anything I’d ever seen before in my limited experience with human anatomy. The system called it the “testicular-prostrate-bulbourethral gland system.” While I knew this game supposedly featured hyper-realistic anatomy, I vaguely suspected they had taken a few anatomical liberties with this one.
Each sac was a quivering mass about ten feet in diameter. I zoomed in with my Gross Anatomy map and saw the tip of this particular tentacle had a penis-like protuberance within a sleeve at the end. The Shrill could extend the spike and spray his sperm into something remarkably small. I had visions of some of the weird Japanese anime that one of my roommates was always watching.
I shuddered. I wasn’t going to extract the sperm using the penis lance thing. I was going to tap directly into the k
eg.
I approached. With my newly acquired darkness vision, the interface combined both of my low-light vision options into one highly-adjustable system. So instead of the green and black line art style, I now had a color overlay that I could adjust on the fly to give more detail.
The interior of the sacs was a complicated system of tubes and glands, all leading to a bottom, fluid-filled chamber. This section of the pulsating sac was filled with thrashing, eel-like sperm. Each sperm was about the size of my finger.
I didn’t know the safest way to do this. I decided simple was best. I pulled the heavy Lamashtu egg from my pack and placed it on the ground outside the sac. I cast Numb and then Incision, creating a small hole in the bottom part of the round gland. I cringed, remembering the amplification ceremony.
The moment I made my cut, the sac ripped even further. With a mighty gush, I was suddenly over my head in bloody Shrill semen. The egg glowed and washed away back down the tube. The world turned upside down as the Shrill began smashing his tentacle against the ground in apparent pain. I bounced, shooting my grappling hook, grasping onto the egg before it could get washed away forever.
Thanks to my Breathless ability, I did not drown. The writhing sperm smashed against me in an attempt to get inside of me. I didn’t know if they were dangerous, but I quickly cast Patch on the rent in the sac. The hole healed, but the giant ball remained deflated. The semen and sperm and blood slowly started to abate, getting absorbed by the muscle and bloodstream.
The egg pulsed with a yellow glow. I pulled a single, wriggling sperm from my teeth. I grasped the egg and tossed it back into my pack.
I was eternally grateful that there was nobody around to have seen that. I pulled out the travel scroll to Necroshire, and I activated it.
Chapter 43
Entering Necroshire.
You have discovered a hidden location! You may now travel to Necroshire using an active transport gazebo.
World Map is back online. Necroshire added to map.
I emerged standing within the town’s transport gazebo, and I stepped out into the bustling activity of the town, gaping at the electric, neon buildings and crackling atmosphere. It was not nighttime out in the main world, but the sky here showed nothing but pitch black. It was like I’d stepped directly out of the game and into some cyberpunk vision of a futuristic downtown Las Vegas. Flashing lights, electric vehicles, pink and blue flashing neon. It was overwhelming.
The pounding bass of distant heavy metal reverberated throughout the city, adding to the sense of chaos.
I probably should have waited a few minutes before I came here. My entire body was soaking wet. I sniffed myself. I smelled like the garbage bin at an adult video store. Finger-sized kaiju sperm fell off of me and hit the tiled ground, thrashing about like fish out of water. They bounced about for a few moments before dying. I did not receive any soul power when they died.
The gazebo itself appeared to be offline. The round platform snaked with neon tubing. When the thing was powered up, it would be lit like any casino sign.
I pulled up my map. It only showed the town, surrounded by a sizzling, static-filled haze. Sure enough, it showed the transport gazebo being offline. That meant I wouldn’t be able to leave until I fixed it.
The city wasn’t very large, smaller even than Kinnegad, but it appeared to have multiple levels. Dozens of shops populated my map.
Thousands of people lived here, shuffling by shoulder-to-shoulder.
The vast majority of them were the octopus-headed leechers. Dozens of the humanoid robot sundered also strolled about. As did multiple humans and shade gremlins. I caught sight of a pair of mole men and a smattering of other races, including the snake-bodied midwives and the lizard-headed caduceus, and a pair of lycans, the first ones I’d seen other than Jenk. I even saw a solitary worm surgeon pass by, walking with purpose.
While I’d seen a handful of the leechers before, this was my first chance to really examine them. They stood about my height and preferred robes, giving them a wizard-like appearance. Their beady eyes seemed to look right through you. Their tentacles cascaded off their faces like beards. Most had five facial tentacles, but not all. Some had six, some four.
Not all leechers wore the standard robes. I didn’t see any mechs, but a few leechers here and there walked about in glowing power armor.
Out of curiosity, I examined my Upcycle options with the leechers. Sure enough, I had the ability to replace the lower half of my face with the appendages, though there was only a 10% chance of success. If I did succeed, I could add a litany of psionic-themed spells ranging from Mind Control to Instant Insanity. Each leecher was different.
But most of their limbs were much weaker than my own. Almost every body part came with a strength debuff.
I moved my vision toward the sundered. The expressionless humanoids moved by with humming servos and glowing joints. Not one of them had anything I could upcycle. Strangely, the opposite wasn’t true for them. Multiple sundered had mismatched, organic body parts of their own. A human leg here, causing the android to limp, a nerve agent arm there. One had replaced his entire lower half with a midwife snake body. Another, surprisingly, had the ant-like head of a zipper.
I switched off my Wicked Meat.
Despite the town’s relatively small size, cars and motorcycles zipped about on the ground and above in the air. These were the first working vehicles I had seen. I followed the path of a flying car as it sped across the coal-black sky. It turned at a floating, neon buoy, and then it disappeared into a tunnel I hadn’t noticed before. The tunnel appeared to be made from the same material as my cloak. A black darker than pure night. A nothingness. I wondered where it led to.
I found the Mystical Upcycle Emporium on my map. It wasn’t too far. I had to find a sewer grate, go down two levels and then walk two blocks over. It was a small shop in an alleyway between a ramen shop and a place called “Superior Sigils.” I took note of several shops I wanted to visit after I was done there.
A fountain bubbled merrily next to the gazebo. I unabashedly used it to clean my hand and head, trying to wash the sex stink off of me. After I felt as presentable as possible, I headed out.
The lower I traveled into the city, the louder the music became. A nightclub of some sort took up the majority of this second sublevel. The ground here shook.
I found the shop, advertised with a small neon sign. I pushed open the unassuming door and entered the dusty, red lobby of the Necroshire Upcycle Emporium. The door jingled with a bell.
Entering Necroshire Mystical Upcycle Emporium.
A group of the surgery imps scattered like rats when I entered. They fled down a tight set of stairs that delved into a brightly lit room. A familiar shriek of laughter and then a clatter emanated from the room. I knew what was down there. This would be my first time coming to this place through the front door.
“Ahh, hello, hello. A return customer. Yes, yes. Welcome, Duke. You are most welcome,” A soft voice said. The words tingled oddly against the back of my neck, almost like the speaker was saying them out loud and in my mind at the same time. An alienist came from around the corner and grasped my hand, shaking it. The bug-headed humanoid only stood up to chest level. He had three fingers on each hand. I knew these guys were technology and wind-based. And their associated guardian was a giant, fire-breathing beetle. But that was pretty much it.
The name over his head was:
Shu – Flesh Merchant (Level 44).
“It is good to finally meet you face to face,” the bug man continued. “My boys have told me much about you.” When he spoke, nothing on his face moved. It was like I was speaking with someone wearing a mask. He poked me in the breastplate. “How is the new liver? It isn’t giving you trouble, is it?” He lifted his finger and touched it with one of his antennae.
“No, no, it’s working great,” I said. I pulled Bernadette’s brain from my inventory. “I have this. It’s from…”
Shu snatched the
brain from my hands, bringing it close to his face. Both of his antennae crawled over it. “Bernadette! Oh, no, Bernadette!” the alienist cried. He paused, examining it more closely. “She has left instructions.”
“She was my aunt,” I said, not knowing what else to say.
“She has left instructions,” Shu repeated. His antennae continued to probe the brain. “Yes, yes, many instructions burned in here. I gave her the upgrades myself years ago.” The bug looked up at me. “You can flash the transport gazebos. Turn them all back on. So many villages have been cut off.”
He looked back and forth, suddenly serious. “Who saw you come here? Who else knows?” He shoved the wet brain back into my hands and rushed to the door. He slid a ridiculously small slide shut, locking it.
“You can flash the transport gazebos,” he said again, looking at the ceiling as if he was thinking. “Not just transport gazebos. Anything infected with the demon virus.”
“Yeah, that’s the plan,” I said.
“They will never let you. The sundered. If you fix the gazebos, refugees will come. They will come to Necroshire. And they will come to Little Cibola.”
“So?” I said.
“When the demons came, Epsilon ousted all non-sundered from their city. At first they just pushed them off the edge, but we fought back. So they opened the tunnel to here, to Necroshire. If you’re not sundered, you can’t enter Little Cibola. All that space, but it is only for them. They can come here, but we can’t go there.”
“Who is Epsilon?” I asked.
Shu ignored the question. “But if you open the portals. The refugees will come. They can control outgoing access, but they can’t stop incoming. They will not like that. Refugees will find their way to Little Cibola. Too many for Epsilon to control. The singularity will not allow that. No sir.”
“That’s a bit douchey of them,” I said.
Kaiju- Battlefield Surgeon Page 35
