Of Beaches Travelled and Blood Spilled

As the seconds passed in the void, John’s heart began to race. He tried to even out his breathing as best he could, waiting in anxious agony for something to happen. The Gamer stashed away his skill gem.

’This is really happening. Am I actually leaving the planet Earth right now or something? What the hell is going on?’

He stood in blackness for barely a minute. Then, the world around him exploded in color, leaving John stumbling backwards over his own feet as a huge thundercrash shook the heavens. He fell with a muted thud onto a damp wooden floor, ears ringing. Shaken, he lay there for a few seconds for the sound of his own heartbeat in his ears to stop.

’It’s OK… It’s OK. I’m fine, I’m fine, everything is OK,’ he thought as the sky’s crackling subsided. ’It’s just a dungeon setting come to life. It’s just atmosphere. I didn’t lose any health or anything, for now, I’m OK. Look around, check for windows, re-evaluate.’

Cautiously climbing back to his feet, The Gamer took in his surroundings; he was in the wheelhouse of what seemed to be some kind of fishing vessel, run aground. The wood of the floorboard was so soaked through as to be soft, and the metal of the walls had started to rust. John walked to one of the cabin windows, scratched and dirt-coated, and looked out over a decimated beachscape littered with dozens, if not hundreds, of crashed vessels.

In the black skies above, an immense storm stretched beyond the horizon in every direction; the clouds grumbled and bristled with thunder and lightning, yet no rain fell. There was only a **** gray fog over the land. A tumultuous ocean of deep blue stretched as far as he could see to his left, and the overgrown ruins of a broken metropolis stood to his right up a ridge. Across the graveyard of ruined ships and rocky crags rose an imposing lighthouse, the only sign of surviving civilization he could see, yet even its light flickered and sputtered, losing the battle with shadow.

“Whoa…” John gasped, taking in the vastness of his surroundings. “Where am I?”

Another boom of thunder shook John from his musings, and he finally started taking stock of his notifications. He had a message and a single new window.

I almost thought you were actually going to not do this

’That all tracks, I suppose. Getting some serious theme park vibes… maybe a bit linear,’ John thought, ignoring the message. 'The money and XP continues to increase, which is pretty awesome. Hopefully there isn’t anything too bad in here.

’Now how the heck am I supposed to actually navigate this place?’

The Gamer began to scope out the area where he had arrived, trying to find a path towards the distant spire. The GPS on his phone was useless, as he expected, but he was pleasantly surprised to find the compass working, even if he wasn’t sure the directions were right.

’Consistency is good enough, really. Mostly North, with a little bit of East? I can follow that. Work my way through the zone until I run into that lighthouse.’

Sighing, he zipped up his jacket and equipped his magic focus, working out how he was going to get down from the captain’s cabin. John started to tremble again as he walked over to the cabin door. He had trouble turning the handle.

’Step out that door and it really starts.’ He exhaled.

’I... alright.’

Swallowing his nerves one final time, John cautiously opened the door and set out from the ship’s cabin, down a small flight of stairs onto the deck. Every rotting plank groaned with John’s footsteps until he reached the lowest point and hopped over the side. He touched down with a mushy, muted crunch on the sand. As John hit the ground with one hand down, the fleeting thought hit him to test that his earth skill still worked.

The Gamer looked around and was overtaken by the density of the fog. He channeled his earth skill, verifying that he could use it on the sand beneath him and on certain parts of the metal ship hulls. Unfortunately, the gray bleakness obscured John’s vision such that he couldn’t even see the full range of his ability anymore.

Pulling out his phone and opening the compass again, John started moving. The wet ground crunched beneath his feet as he crept forward. Ships in various states of disrepair surrounded the nervous nerd, their hulls torn open and rusting.

’Maybe I should press up against one of these wrecks, could give me some cover and direction. I’m lucky it's just fog.’

The Gamer’s vision was starting to acclimate to the low light, but the wind and thunder muted almost all other sound. John slid into the shadow of another shipwreck, stopping to re-orient himself, when he finally spotted movement that he didn’t think was just the wind in the fog.

Some kind of dark mass moved about between the ships in front of him. In the sudden bursts of light provided by the lightning, he made out a shambling body, bloated and rotting. The raincoat it wore was threadbare and stained, whipping violently in the wind.

’A zombie or something similar… ’ John thought, his heart starting to race. ’Man, there’s really a monster in front of me… OK. OK. Kill it fast, no goofing around.’

The walking corpse continued to shuffle around between the ships ahead of John, seemingly with little aim. It hadn’t noticed him, so he cast [Observe].

’Hmm… water themed, which makes sense, though I have no idea if this pace is its top speed or if its suddenly going to become a runner if it spots me,’ John reasoned, quietly shuffling along the ship he was hiding next to. ’I could maybe sneak around it, but I probably ought to try this out before I find one I have **** but to fight.’

“Too much HP for the air spell,” John whispered to himself, “so earth it is.”

John extended his right arm, hand upturned, focus clutched close in his left, and invoked his [Geo Alchemy: Lesser Earth Spike] directly underneath the monster.

Once more, circles of magic formed on John’s right elbow and wrist, and a third appeared on his palm, all a glowing orange-gold color. The droplets of water that hit them sizzled.

John closed his fist and a spike, formed of the silicates in the sand, shot upward and impaled the bloated corpse in front of him, lifting the body off the ground, splattering something dark into the rain around it.

The monster went limp, unmoving, with black goo oozing from the point of impalement.

’Geez,’ he thought, stunned. ’Brutal much?’

John's experience bar crept up ever so slightly - he confirmed it to be twenty points.

'It would take me a long while to level on just these things,' he calculated. 'Over thirty, though that's not counting my quests or clear bonus, and they'd count for more than half that.'

The Gamer jumped a little as the corpse suddenly dissolved, leaving behind a small sack on the ground. It shone lightly through the mist with a pale gray light. Nervously looking around, John decided that he was indeed alone, and dashed across to where the sack was, then through the clearing to another ship’s hull.

Once in cover, he tried to open the sack, only for it, too, to dissolve. A small “+$5” floated where the sack had been, and a chest icon flashed in the corner of his vision. Opening his inventory, John found that he’d gotten an item drop.

’Oh. Five bucks… and, ew, a zombie bone? Yeah, no thanks.’

He considered dropping the item on the ground immediately, but the hoarder in the back of his mind convinced him to keep it until he was out of space.

Looking up from his inventory, John realized that he was still a ways away from the lighthouse, the imposing structure still somewhat distant. Nodding, he retrieved a protein bar from his inventory, chowed down to buff up his regen, and moved on.

The next few encounters hadn’t gone much different than the first; John had crept as cautiously as he could from cover to cover, doing his best to start and end the fights before anything could spot him; he’d mostly succeeded so far. The relatively quick pace of those he hadn’t been able to one hit kill had caught The Gamer off guard at first, but not enough that he’d quite gotten hit yet.

All of John’s drops so far had been either raw cash or bits of zombie; he had clumps of flesh, a pile of bones, and even one zombie's disgusting jacket, stained with rot and black ooze. He was still entirely clueless on what to do with the body parts, and there was no way he was going to wear that nasty coat.

As he’d gotten closer to the slope beneath the lighthouse, the wreckage density had increased dramatically, making it hard for John to keep any distance between him and the monsters. He hoped that at least the thunder still covered his approach.

John slunk around another corner, eyes peeled for any more shapes in the hazy fog. The area in front of The Gamer’s cover was more wide open than anywhere else he’d found so far in the dungeon. A single ship - some kind of military cruiser if John’s guess was correct - had been sheared cleanly in two, and its halves jutted out of the ends of the clearing in front of him. Scattered boxes and hunks of steel broke up the rest of the space. The enormous wreckage of a shipping freighter stood as a wall on the far side, its bow and stern beyond the edges of the fog.

Peering into the darkness between shipwrecks, The Gamer spotted three zombies shambling around in the space between pieces of junk. Two of them were the same as the others he’d encountered, but the third was noticeably different. It was larger than the others with bulkier limbs and a red fishing hat atop its leathery head. Unlike the others, wandering around aimlessly, this one stood still in the distance. John might have missed it in the haze were it not for its putrid eyes, whose piercing yellow glow shone through the fog.

’A magic monster maybe?’ he wondered. ’A miniboss?’

With the heaviness of the fog, John struggled to focus enough to cast [Observe] on the larger zombie, so he began to creep into the clearing, trying to keep his head down. About halfway across the clearing, John settled behind a slab of steel, the figure of the enemy clear enough to cast on.

’OK, so it’s, like, a rare? Got a decent chunk more HP than the others…’

John’s analysis was interrupted by sudden squishing and crunching noises in the sand around him. He turned and held his breath. The soft thud of footsteps grew closer, faster than he’d expected.

’Are they getting closer?’

The Gamer placed his hand on the steel of his cover and briefly channeled [Lesser Earth Spike], double checking that he would be able to mold the steel he hid behind. The crunching of footsteps got louder, echoing in his mind.

’Dang, when did they see me?’

Stomach churning, John waited for something to round the corner into his vision. He realized that he could hear multiple sets of footsteps now as well, all closing in on him. His heartbeat began to thump in his ear.

’I’m outnumbered.’

As the first zombie rounded the corner, The Gamer impaled it with his makeshift barricade, metal groaning as it warped and deformed into a wicked spike, forcing its way through the soft, squishy spot between the monster’s ribs. The fisherman’s body slumped over the spike, motionless, and John whirled to meet the second set of steps.

He was caught off guard though, unable to stop the arm that flailed into the side of his face. John’s head snapped sideways with a sickening thwap, and he had to catch himself on the outstretched spike behind him before he collapsed into the dirt. The Gamer’s health bar shrunk by nearly a fifth, but he was too busy seeing stars to realize it. John tasted copper.

Thankful, for once, that he’d been hit by Frank enough times to toughen his glass jaw, John reoriented himself just quickly enough for the second swing. The Gamer ducked and dove out from underneath a meaty arm, throwing himself onto the wet, black sand with a hearty plop.

The second zombie struck the remainder of the chunk of hull he’d been hiding behind moments earlier, a resounding clang cutting through the softer rumble of the storm above.

John frantically scrambled to his feet as the remaining normal zombie was joined by the yellow-eyed monstrosity in rushing him. His mind raced as he struggled to keep his footing on the mushy sand.

’Thin the numbers; make it a one vs one,’ John decided.

“Of course they’re stupid runners…”

Luckily for John, the zombies’ frenzied shuffling through the sand, though quick, lacked any of his agility. He had a lot of experience running away, and the field of scattered debris offered a lot for him to juke around. Dashing into the scrapyard, John tried to keep as many corners, dips, and lumps of steel between him and his pursuers as possible.

Swinging hard around a long, flat piece of hull, The Gamer began to channel again, reaching out to the sand, pulling on every atom he could. Orange illuminated the fog around him. His pursuers rounded the corner in front of him, only for the smaller to be met by another sickening spike of metal to the side. Only a glancing hit landed though, and it kept moving.

’No! Come on, John!’

John’s moment of disarray cost him, however, as the Abomination moved past its injured ally and was upon him before he could retreat. Hoping to pre-empt the shambling monster’s swing, John swapped his weapon set and threw himself forward, knife first. About halfway to his target, John remembered he actually didn’t know how to use his knife at all.

The Gamer’s pitiful STR came back to haunt him; even with momentum he could barely pierce into the hulking monster’s chest. A shudder ran down John’s arm to his spine as his knife cut in and hit bone, becoming lodged in the monster’s leathery flesh. His wrist twisted painfully, and he was **** to let go of his blade as his attack crumpled.

Panicking, John abandoned his knife and dove underneath a retaliatory swipe, dashing past his aggressor. He bolted away, sprinting back towards the other zombie. The Gamer threw up his free hand, which began to glow a vibrant green as he channeled his [Lesseer Air Burst]. Swirls of gathering wind formed in his hand, awash with verdant light.

John launched the blast at the enemy in front of him. The furious gale smashed into the monster’s chest, crushing into the spot his spike had hit before and knocking it backwards onto the sand. The Gamer never halted his momentum, leaping over the lifeless body towards another piece of cover. John’s experience edged farther to the right.

Trying to get anything in between himself and the abomination, John attempted to vault a waist high piece of broken decking, only to fumble over himself and end up face first in the sand. He rolled with it as well as he could, spitting bitter dirt. Shaking his head, John brought his arm up to cast a spell as his assailant approached once more.

Seconds later, when the bloated abomination peeked its gnarled face over the shattered wood, John launched everything he had. The sand began to quake softly beneath The Gamer’s attacker, silicates clumping together in preparation of his cast. Rings of orange-gold once more donned John’s arm. He closed his fist.

The ground seemed to pop as the spike exploded from the earth, shattering the creature’s bloated kneecap. There was a momentary pattering sound as black ooze and wet sand rained down around the pair. The creature’s leg was torn and folded at a horrifying angle. Still alive, what remained of the monster heaved its body over the wood with the strength of its arms, closing on John.

The Gamer hit it with a second [Lesser Earth Spike], pinning part of its chest, but it continued to paw at his legs as he shuffled backwards. Rotting hands grabbed at John’s shoes, catching and pulling on the laces. Panicked kicks did little to dissuade the zombie before a third spell, ripping through the abomination’s chest, finally ended the battle.

Heart racing, John stopped to catch his breath as the body began to disintegrate, leaving behind a sack of loot and his knife. The air burned in his lungs. He curled his legs up towards his body and away from where the creature had been.

John was panting, gasping for air. He was dripping sweat, despite the freezing temperature. His heartbeat throbbed in his ear. He brought his hand to his cheek, reaching for the phantom pain on the side of his face. Only then did The Gamer realize that there was no evidence of injury on him anywhere, besides his HP bar, just below half full.

’OK… OK… We’re good… they’re dead. I did it…’ John celebrated internally, his body deflating as adrenaline receded. ’I did it!’

Dragging himself from his slump in the sand, The Gamer collected his cash drops and discarded knife, now bent at the tip. He re-equipped his knife in his second weapon set and swapped to his focus.

Disappointingly, the mini-boss hadn't dropped anything too spectacular, though The Gamer did now have its severed head in his inventory. On the upside, it had been worth three times the experience of a normal zombie.

John moved back to where he’d been before the fight, stopping to take stock of his location by the twisted remains of his original cover.

Following his compass to the far side of the clearing he’d entered, John found an enormous hole ripped into the side of the towering freighter which had played backdrop to his previous fight. He couldn’t reach from one end of the hole to the other.

’What the hell hit this thing?’ John wondered. ’Glad it ain’t here…’

He facepalmed.

’Never think that. That’s how you get turned into a red shirt.’

John cautiously checked the first couple rooms he could access inside the vessel. The metal inside was green with rust and oxidation, and sand had blown all the way to the first interior hall he stumbled into. The smell was all salt and rot. It ate at his nose as he peered around the wreck.

’This thing is a real mess… it is the right direction though…’ John thought. ’I should regroup a bit first. I used too much mana in that fight. I can pre-prep here.’

Sitting down on a box outside, John took the time to drink water and eat some of the food he’d packed. He spent time thinking about the fight as best he could, but his adrenaline-tired mind was unable to think about it clearly. With some hesitation, he popped a couple ibuprofen as well, hoping to mitigate how much another hit might stun him.

The Gamer re-tied his shoes, pulled out a flashlight, and entered the wreck.