Of the Lighthouse and Its Keeper

Slowly, John stood from the puddle of scarlet-tinged water he knelt in, and collapsed against the wall. He closed his eyes, tried to breathe in deeply, and let his nerves settle. The pounding of his heart in his ears was deafening. He cried.

The adrenaline had left his system. He was cold, but not in pain. It seemed as though Gamer’s Body was as thorough as he could have hoped. He gripped his once ruined hand and found all as it should be. He cracked his knuckles and flexed his fingers.

Despite how low his HP was, he had no injuries to speak of anymore.

Tilting his head back, John smiled through tears, though he didn’t really know why. The Gamer’s stomach churned with too many conflicting feelings; he couldn’t really process them anymore. The relief and euphoria were greater than anything he’d felt in the past, but so too were the pain and the terror now etched into his mind.

He’d always lived a simple life of little risk and little reward. The thought that this dungeon might lead to his **** had barely entered his mind; the concept of **** had never been so real to John before, nor had the consequences of his mistakes been so severe.

He wanted so badly to give up and quit.

John pitted his fear against his desire to continue. He thought of all the horrific deaths he might have found inside the ship, but also of what his life had been before today - the bullying and loneliness and depression.

And then he thought of what he’d accomplished in the single day he’d had his powers. The joy he’d felt making a friend again. Excitement just to exist.

’I… I won,’ he thought, still somewhat in shock. ’I am still alive. John Newman is still alive… ’

“Take that, stupid crabs.”

John remained leaning on the wall as he opened his eyes again to take in the impromptu battlefield. Of the bodies, only loot remained. The walls were splattered with blood of two colors. No life remained besides John.

John decided that waiting here would be suicidal if the creatures could respawn, and so he **** himself to get moving. He gathered his equipment and enemy drops, checking for damage where he could. Most of his stuff seemed only to have lost a little durability, besides his knife and winter coat. The former was bent to an unusable angle, while the latter was shredded and soaked with blood and water.

As he was leaving the hall, he opened the one notification he’d gotten.

A little bottle of bright red fluid appeared in The Gamer’s inventory. It was a small glass bottle, pleasantly cool in his hands as he brought it out. A quick [Observe] showed that it would restore 50 points of HP if he drank the whole thing at once. Despite some urge to study it more, John refused to remain at critical HP any longer than he had to, so he chugged it quickly before stashing the bottle away again.

’Good to hear from you again, Miss Lady in my head,’ John thought as the liquid ran down his throat, tasting faintly of cherry. ’It was starting to get lonely in here.’

You seemed a little busy.

The Gamer smiled wryly. “I suppose so.”

The friendly red of his HP bar returning, John began to settle some, comforted that he was once more at a stable health level. The new points of Endurance had somewhat improved his max HP and his spirits, but it also reminded John that he should finish using the stat point that he’d saved. Leaving power on the table was a mistake that The Gamer didn’t intend to repeat.

’I don’t have a ton of time to consider all of this, but I can’t afford to wait. Opportunity cost,’ John determined. ’I need to be able to keep myself alive. One point in STR for now.’

The crabs had dropped less money than the zombies, and he’d only ended up with a single giant crab body for the near-**** experience he’d had. A sick part of him wondered if it would make a good meal, like normal crabs, but he didn’t even want to know what kind of extradimensional nastiness could be in that meat.

’If I never see one of those again, it’ll be too soon… I’m never going to be able to eat a crab roll again, am I?’ he lamented. ’At least I’m almost halfway to leveling up already.’

With his points spent and drops collected, John had settled back into his room-clearing rhythm, hoping to escape from the wreck as quickly as possible. He found himself more attentive this time, and every little sound made him jump. Fortunately for The Gamer’s sanity, he was not accosted any further.

It took some work to get himself back on track from wherever his random sprint had taken him, but he was eventually successful in finding another faded sign. He sloshed through hall after hall, and, eventually, the water began to dry up.

It wasn’t long then before he finally arrived at his goal, a hatch leading to a staircase upwards. The Gamer climbed upward for some time before reaching the bridge. As he entered, John found himself nearly blinded by even the uneasy light of the storm through the windows.

The Gamer stored his flashlight once more, freeing his hand as he explored the room he was in. Through the glass to starboard, John was able to clearly see the lighthouse once more. The structure was far closer than John would have thought, though he was beginning to feel a Twilight Zone kind of vibe, so he wasn’t sure if he was going crazy or not.

’I don’t exactly have a great sense of direction, if I’m being honest. Maybe I’m being dumb.’

From this angle, John could finally appreciate just how massive the lighthouse was, stretching what must have been a hundred or more feet into the air. The sides were painted stark white, with stripes of red and blue around the deck at the top where the light still occasionally flickered. It was perched atop a small coastal outcropping, against which mighty waves crashed.

The Gamer could make out a fenced area at the foot of the lighthouse, connected to a small bridge that led to the mainland. He could see a fairly straight shot from the bottom of the ocean liner to an old, rusty set of metal stairs that led up the side.

’Guess I’m out of the frying pan now,’ John thought, heading to a door on the side of the bridge tower and starting the walk down. ’Best be wary of any fires.’

The run up to the staircase wasn’t too difficult for John to complete. The monsters came in larger groups now, but they contained only zombies. John was thankful that the crabs seemed to not have followed him from the wreck. Now, The Gamer found himself finishing off yet another protein bar as he approached the crumbling set of stairs that rose from the beach

’I definitely need a better way of managing my mana besides constantly eating,’ he thought, impaling yet another bloated fisherman upon a [Lesser Earth Spike]. ’I can’t eat like this every day; I’ll be sick if I have to keep wolfing down protein bars.’

Cautiously, John tested the sturdiness of the first step. It creaked and groaned, and his heart jumped with every sound. He looked upwards at the rocks and decided that climbing wasn’t possible.

’Would an elevator be too much to ask for?’ John wondered. ’I’ve seen movies, you know, these things are not safe.’

The Gamer hung onto the rusty guardrails with white knuckles as he began his ascent. He moved slowly, one foot at a time, more than once stopping to use his earth skills to brace a stair before he put his weight on it. Despite his terror at the climb, he eventually reached the top. A worn chain door clung to half-broken hinges, falling over as John pushed on it, allowing him access to the top.

The fenced-off area he’d seen before was the remains of a parking lot, though there were few cars left, and all were overgrown and sun-bleached. Their bare metal was an interesting contrast to the darkness around. The pavement was cracked and broken, and flowers were beginning to peek through the gaps.

The decomposing bodies of bloated fishermen were piled around the corners of vehicles. There were no signs of life (besides the plants) that John could see. He narrowed his eyes as he looked at the corpses.

John coughed, pulling his shirt over his nose. “I doubt those bodies landed there on their own.”

When the nervous nerd finally arrived at the front entrance to the building, he found the metal doors ajar, their windows smashed, with signs of impact on the frame - it had been dented and caved inward. Overturned cabinets and couches seemed to form the remains of a makeshift barricade on the inside, sundered by whatever had pressed through.

Anxiously, he crossed the threshold, closing the doors behind him so hopefully nothing would follow. The lights inside sputtered occasionally, but enough shone consistently that he didn’t need the flashlight this time.

He found himself in a fancy entrance hall, with rounded, sweeping staircases up either side. The walls were concrete, with red and white paint flaking off. The ceiling was high; John estimated twenty feet at least. At one point, the room would have been beautiful, but in its current state of abandonment, it was just short of terrifying.

’At least there’s light. Can’t take that for granted anymore.’

The walls had large planters of flowers along the side, now either overgrown or rotting. Dried blood and black ooze covered the floor, whose tile was cracked in places from heavy impacts. A desk, once likely meant for some receptionist at the front, had been ripped from the floor and chucked across the room, where it sat embedded in the opposing wall. Debris was everywhere.

’Something nasty came through here…’ John thought, checking for signs of life. ’Something really nasty… You couldn’t have sent me to the tropics or something, first?’

The Gamer didn’t expect an answer to that one.

Resigning himself to exploring the tower, John checked which parts of the structure he could manipulate. There was some resistance when he tried to cast on the concrete, but the metal supports on the walls and roof bent easily enough. He wasn’t sure entirely what was wrong with concrete specifically, but took a mental note.

As he approached the staircase entryway to the second floor, John found the doors **** open and the furniture either overturned or smashed outright. These had again been barricaded at some point, though whatever had wanted in had eventually gotten its way.

The second floor was nicer than the first, if only because the disrepair was slightly less severe as it had been below, as if someone had made attempts to maintain it. The roof wasn’t quite as tall though, which reduced some of the grandeur.

The space itself was almost entirely devoted to what seemed to be a hastily constructed defensive encampment, almost like a staging area. The office tables and desks and other normal equipment had been converted into another barricade, now broken and scattered around the room. There was a rack for weapons, makeshift spears and swords and axes, crudely formed from the steel of ships.

’Their durability is awful, but I guess they’re better than my broken knife,’ he thought, storing a couple of each kind in his inventory.

The most depressing part for John was that the area clearly hadn’t been packed up - he couldn’t think of any other reason for the weapons to be left behind. Whoever had been holed up in here had left in a hurry, or not at all. Approaching the next staircase on the far side of the room, The Gamer found signs of conflict, bloody splotches and broken weapons.

’At least maybe someone got to fight back?’

He didn’t know for sure, but he'd seen more than enough movies to guess what he was looking at; whatever apocalypse had grounded all those ships and ruined the city up the coast, someone had survived, and they’d hidden out here. Such encampments never lasted without help, unfortunately, and something had gotten in - something always got in.

’I hope they’re alright or, er, wait…’ John paused, setting down a broken, black-stained spear he’d found on the floor. ’Are the people in my barriers real? Were there actual living people in here that got hurt? Or are they just NPCs… just flavor text?

’Does it really matter? If they think they’re alive, if they even can think that, then what would be the difference if they only lived in the barrier or not? Did a world like this always exist out there somewhere, or did my powers make this?

’Any input from up there?’ he thought, looking up to the ceiling.

Sighing at the lack of response, John started the trek up to the third floor. As he got closer, he heard the faint sounds of movement, reverberating down the stairwell, small thumps and thuds. He slowed his movement, hoping to be the one with the element of surprise this time. He approached the top of the staircase cautiously, finding yet more doors crushed inwards, and peered nervously up and inside.

The Gamer guessed that the third floor must once have been a library or some kind of records room. The walls were covered in bookshelves from floor to ceiling, though some had fallen or collapsed inward. Much of the center of the room seemed to have been cleared to make spaces for palettes and tables, though they’d been shoved to the side as if something had come barreling through the room. Books and papers were strewn about haphazardly.

Small, rectangular windows wrapped around the top of the walls, allowing the soft patter of rain to be heard from within. Occasional flashes of lightning and rumbles of thunder interrupted the otherwise mostly static scene.

A massive steel chandelier hung from the ceiling by a rusty chain. It was a huge, gnarly mass of metal - twisted wrought iron crafted into swirls and wave patterns; water dripped from it to the moldy carpet below. John realized that it must be electric, since its false candles were flickering. The once plush floor was matted with dried blood - a sickening amount this time.

The smell was nauseating.

’There wasn’t a defense; this was a slaughter…’

John counted at least three Bloated Fishermen wandering around among the boxes, likely the source of the noise he’d heard. Though, the centerpiece of the scene in front of him was what he could only assume was a boss. Kneeling directly in front of a doorway in the back right of the room from John’s position was a large, imposing figure - a deformed being, dripping with sickly black fluid.

He looked somewhat like the other zombies, but was far larger in stature, and he wore some kind of armored chest piece underneath a trenchcoat, all matched with a helmet, painted pure black with a line of faded pink down the middle. All of the creature’s flesh was coated and dripping with the ooze that had come from the lesser enemies - so much so that John couldn’t even see if it was human underneath.

The monster’s right arm was gigantic, bulbous, and rippling with muscle, while the left was seemingly missing entirely. A gigantic hand nearly the size of The Gamer’s chest was pressed firmly into the ground where the mold seemed to have grown over it. The sinews and muscle fibers throbbed in a sickly, unnatural way that deeply triggered John’s sense of uncanniness. They were squirming.

A large broadsword was stuck in the ground in front of him, though the blade was cracked and scarred. On the crossguard was embedded a pure blue crystal, whose light glow made the entire blade’s edge glisten. The whole room seemed to grow colder as John looked at it. The entire sword was caked in red and brown.

Whatever that thing was, it absolutely screamed boss to John. The Gamer couldn’t tell if he was really a zombie or not, but [Observe] did confirm for John that this guy was bad news.

’Some special type of zombie? Some kind of homunculus? Kinda looks like a charger.’

’A hundred and fifty??’ John thought, backing up into the stairwell. ’How am I supposed to kill that? The adds aren’t that big a deal, but there’s no way I’m getting that guy down before he gets a couple swings in.’

John set all the intellect he had to work, trying to derive some kind of usable strategy against the boss. The only cover the room offered him was behind the fallen shelves and palettes. He wasn’t going to dare trying to actually kite a boss.

Hesitating as he looked at the boss’ HP one more time, John considered fleeing. Dozens of horrifying, painful ends plagued his mind.

’It’s so much more powerful than I am… and I could actually die trying…’ John thought, slowly backing down the stairs, ’Maybe I could just live with tiny boosts from normal life forever… but… What’s the point of being a video game character that never completes the tutorial?’

The Gamer sat in the stairway for several minutes. He remembered the cute blonde from the library, June wishing him happy birthday, and the excitement he’d felt as he first cast [Reshape Matter].

’I’ve been so resigned to my life for so long, I hadn’t thought about how much better it could actually be… I was truly happy today… I was motivated; I had goals...’ John realized, ’...for the first time, maybe, in years…’

He stood back up and took a deep breath.

’I’ve made it this far; I shouldn’t stop now; I can’t. This dungeon was definitely scaled for me to beat it, so there must be an answer, right? I can figure this out,’ he decided, standing up. ’What supplies do I have and how can I try and exploit them?’

He opened his inventory and started checking everything he had, from food to weaponry. He checked his skills and their masteries, looking for anything that could stand out.

’I need some kind of edge. I have time to plan for this one… this is my zone.’

—------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

After some time, John returned to the edge of the door and began using the range of his [Reshape Matter] to check spacing. He could only feel elements within 30 feet, so he had at least some reference. The room was yet again smaller around than the one below, but it was taller even than the first.

He tested the materials of the room to see which skills would work on what. Checking some math in his phone’s note program, The Gamer found what he was hoping for. Finally, he had the beginnings of a plan.

’If it has HP, I can kill it.’