Rumble in the Jungle

With Kim and Kaen, 17:03 PM

Fighting a necromancer was bad enough in most situations. If that necromancer actually knew how to fight in hand-to-hand combat, it was even worse.

“Why won’t you stay dead?!?” screamed Kaen as she wrestled with the Elemental Wolf. Thanks to her draconic ancestry, fire didn’t bother her, but the reckless abandon with which the undead wolf attacked her made it slightly difficult. Especially when it came back to life. Two times.

Throwing the overgrown dog off of her, she immediately jumped to her feet and grabbed the dog by the limp neck. Trying to first transfer her internal heat into the wolf, it seemed to have as much effect on the wolf as its heat did on her, so she simply suplexed it into the ground behind her, breaking its back with a sickening crunch. If the thing would come back time and time again, then she would simply mangle the corpse enough so that it couldn’t even do anything. Just as she wanted to help Kim with the monk, another skull flew in her direction and implanted itself into the corpse of the downed wolf, igniting it once again and making Kaen scream in annoyance as she pummeled into the head of the beast.

“STAY! DEAD!”

Kim was meanwhile trying to deal with the monk-like necromancer, who had an elusive fighting style, dodging her attacks more often than not. She really wished that she had her sword with her, that would’ve made this situation a lot easier. But she didn’t have that luxury, so she had to resort to the newest trick in her repertoire. Whirling her new chi-powered chain, she tried to fix her enemy just long enough to deal any substantial damage to him. Looking at his skulls, she assumed that her enemy would only have a limited amount of resurrections, seeing as how the number of flaming skulls around him steadily decreased every time Kaen killed the wolf.

Slinging the chain around her enemy’s extended fist after she dodged one of his attacks, she took the opportunity to jam the spikes of her chain deep into the flesh of her opponent to keep him close. After taking a rapid flurry of strikes to the gut, he sunk to his knees, enabling Kim to end his life with a powerful kick to the head, breaking his neck with an audible crack.

Taking a moment to breathe, she barely had the time to dodge an incoming arrow by rolling to the side. Trying to find her attacker, she thought that she saw a shape up in the dark, cloudy sky but quickly lost sight of it again until another arrow came sailing towards her. Sidestepping the arrow this time, she was sure that the attack came from somewhere in the clouds, meaning that there was some kind of flying enemy up there. Looking back at Kaen, she saw that the dragon-girl had just finished the wolf once again, smashing him into the ground with enough **** to crack the ground.

“Aerial attack! Let’s get to cover!” Kaen quickly reacted to those words, jumping into one of the windows with a single, powerful leap. Following her by using the chain in her hands like a grappling hook, Kim climbed up to the same window, ducking behind the wall to not give the archer any opportunity to shoot at them.

“Did you see the guy shooting?” asked Kaen, clearly irritated by such a ranged attack.

Kim could only shake her head, “I’ve seen something in the clouds but nothing clear… I’m not even sure if that archer has anything to do with the necromancer… Speaking of which, why is there a necromancer here?”

“What do you mean?”

“Last time I was here with John, we only encountered those wolves and a bigger variation with multiple elements later on; there was no human opposition in here. If this is actually his Barrier, which I still believe, then something affected it in a way so that it changed its properties, spawning different enemies…” theorized the Moon fighter.

“So you’re saying this is actually John’s Barrier? So we indeed need to kill everything?” asked Kaen, excited and concerned at the same time.

“That would be my theory… What is taking John so long?” growled Kim. Looking at her phone, she saw that she had received a message from John saying that they were in the Barrier as well now. Hopefully they were in the correct Barrier though…

Kim [17:10]: Downstairs? Does your Barrier have a downstairs? We didn’t explore that much last time... Also please tell me that you’re in the same Barrier as us…

John [17:11]: Oh shit, okay this is bad! No, I’m not in my Barrier! Me, Brunhilde and Aloy are in another Barrier, the one I actually wanted to explore. Can you leave?

Kim [17:11]: No.

John [17:12]: Okay, I guess you just need to kill the wolves again? That shouldn’t be a problem for you, right?

John [17:13]: Let me check for you where the wolves are.

John [17:15]: WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON??? WHY IS THERE A MONK LOOKING SKULL DUDE RUNNING AROUND?!? WHERE ARE THE WOLVES?!? I’ll try to get the others, we’re coming to get you!

Kim [17:16]: Skull dude?

Dreading the view, Kim stuck her head over the edge of the window and took a peek outside. And sure enough, the necromancer was not lying at the spot where she had broken his neck.

This was starting to get annoying.

Kaen looked at Kim with a confused face, “What’s going on?”

Sighing, Kim tried to explain without getting too agitated, “Well, it seems that we are in the wrong Barrier. There is another Barrier, and John is investigating that one now… And he has backup apparently. Bad news, however, the necromancer got up, so we need to now get him and that archer…”

As the martial artist explained their situation, Kaen shrunk together more and more in embarrassment, “Uh… Well… Oops? Well, see it positively: it’s possible that no one would’ve noticed whatever this Barrier here is and that would’ve led to more problems?”

Taking a deep breath, Kim conceded that point, “While that might be true, we still have to deal with the problem of being split up and trapped in here… Well, no reason to stay here, we should find that necromancer...”

As they stood up to find their enemy, Kim’s phone buzzed once again, signalling an incoming message.

John [17:18]: FUUUUUUUCK

Something was very wrong.

With Brun & Aloy, 17:06 PM

The two girls were slowly making their way through the first floor of the school, taking in all the calamity that was visible… these replicas of the students were really gut twisting, even if they were fake…

“This is horrible… I can’t believe anyone would do something like this…” muttered Aloy, looking from one ‘corpse’ to the other.

“Well you better believe it, ‘cause there are a lot of people in the Abyss that would do something like this,” answered Brun with a grim look on her face. Even if she didn’t want to admit it, this place was really putting her on the edge.

“But… why?”

“Because some people are just sick and twisted like that. There are many powerful people in the Abyss that start to think that morals and laws don’t apply to them anymore, so they just do whatever they want to pursue their goal, whatever that is. Immortality, control, power, that kind of stuff.”

“Is the Abyss really that horrible? Why even live there if it’s that bad?”

Brun shrugged at that, “I’ve been used to it my entire life. Hell, if we want to get technical, I wouldn’t exist without the Abyss, and I like existing. And no, most of the time it’s not that bad; there are enough good guys that keep them in check, especially when you look at this town. We have the Order, there’s us, there are some morally sound hunting parties in the woods somewhere, and some other upstanding citizens that don’t tolerate that kind of stuff. So it’s pretty balanced. Also, the Abyss throws the best parties ever, wouldn’t miss it for a chance.”

That seemed to lighten the mood a bit as they walked through the corridors and rooms. Here and there, Aloy tried to use her tracking abilities to find some kind of lead. Sadly, with all the fake blood and the tracks of those replicas around, there wasn’t much to be tracked.

“I don’t think I can properly find anything here… there are simply too many tracks…”

“Not even with your Focus?”

That simple question sparked something in Aloy… How did Brun know of the small metallic clip near her ear that gave her a special view of the world with which she could easily see tracks and follow them. “How do you know about that one?” she asked, curious about the answer.

The blonde valkyrie paled at the question. Thankfully, it was dark enough around here that it wasn’t really noticeable, but now she had to pull a convincing reason out of her butt fast… “I…uhm… well, John told me about it…”

That… still didn’t seem right. How did John know about it? They never talked about it… matter of fact, he seemed a bit too familiar with her… How didn’t she notice that before? “And how does John know about it?”

Fuck, so that was kind of a blunder on Brun’s side… “Aaaahm… heeee…. Uh… He used one of his skills to see what kind of equipment you have with you, he noticed it then, and then told me about it when I asked him what you can do.”

Something about that still seemed wrong, but that was something Aloy had to deal with after this… If John was right in his assumption, then people were potentially in danger in here somewhere. She would have to put her personal questions behind for now to see whoever was here in safety.

After another couple of minutes of fruitless searching, the two of them heard John’s voice in their heads. His tone was hurried and frantic, “Girls! We have a problem! Kim and Kaen aren’t in this Barrier! For some reason they ended up in my Barrier that I opened at school on Tuesday. I need you to get here as quickly as possible so that we can get there; something is very wrong with that Barrier.”

The alarm in John’s voice made both of them hurriedly pull out their key cards, frantically searching for some slot to insert them into, until Brun simply jammed her sword into the ground to create a cut in the even flooring, pushing her card into it a second later.

While the door was still growing, both of them jumped into the doorway, falling over from the sudden shift in gravity as the world around them became vertical.

Taking a moment to get their bearings, Aloy looked at Brun, “Do we… keep it open? Someone could stumble over it, and I want to avoid that…”

“Me neither… How do we close it though?” asked Brun, searching for some kind of closing device.

“Have you tried simply thinking about closing the door?” came a voice from behind the two girls.

Startling them, they saw the delicate face of a girl with short, red hair and green eyes looking at them from a display on the wall.

As Brun tried exactly that, Aloy looked at the screen, “Who or what are you?”

Smiling at that question, the face answered, “I am SARAI, or Specialized Augmented Reality Artificial Intelligence. I was created by the previous master to keep watch over the Nexus, and I serve the current Master. I know both of you are his companions and have access here, so I am happy to help.”

Relieved by that answer, Aloy smiled at the computer screen, “Well, thank you, SARAI.”

The valkyrie meanwhile had striking success with closing the gateway, transforming the door back into its card form.

A second later, something dawned on her, “Can we actually only open this from the outside? Are we trapped?”

The AI nodded at that, “Yes, the cards are only able to open a gateway to the Nexus from somewhere else; it is not possible to open it from this side. However, from what I understood from your conversation, Master should open the way from his side at any point soon anyway, correct?”

Nodding at that, the two girls looked at each other, “Well, guess that means waiting for John to open up the door…” sighed Brun, taking a seat on the ground. “He really should invest in some furniture in here…”

At that moment, they both heard a scream in their head.

“FUUUUUUUUUUUUCK”

With John, 17:08 PM

Auditory Atmosphere Supplement Activated. Now Playing: Nox Arcana - Dementia 13

While Thorn had found some kind of trail, it felt like it ran around every corner in the confusing labyrinthine complex that was the basement. John wanted to assume that it was even more complex than he remembered it to be… Did this mean that something was surely down here since some effort was made into expanding this place, or was this some kind of ruse? They had been running around for a couple of minutes now when his UI lit up with a new message.

Kim [17:10]: Downstairs? Does your Barrier have a downstairs? We didn’t explore that much last time... Also please tell me that you’re in the same Barrier as us…

His Barrier?... Oh no, this was bad… Immediately sending the mental message to the girls to get them going, he replied to Kim as he took off in the direction they had come in. If he wanted to switch Barriers, then he would do it at a place he knew he could enter the other Barrier… No point in getting stuck in rock or something like that.

John [17:11]: Oh shit, okay this is bad! No, I’m not in my Barrier! Me, Brun and Aloy are in another Barrier, the one I actually wanted to explore. Can you leave?

Kim's next message sent him even more into overdrive to get upstairs.

Kim [17:11]: No.

He had feared that that was the case… This ‘mission’ was going down the shitter the longer it was going on… Hopefully the girls were okay in his Barrier and the wolves weren’t giving them too much of a problem...

But then he remembered that he was talking to Kim here; she was still more than double his level, and the Barrier was on his level from three days ago. This shouldn’t be anything to be concerned about.

John [17:12]: Okay, I guess you just need to kill the wolves again? That shouldn’t be a problem for you, right?

As he was sprinting back through the maze of underground corridors, he wanted to slam his head into the wall repeatedly due to his own stupidity. He had been so focused on this Barrier that he not only freaked out and forgot any type of instinct he had, he had apparently also forgotten his own abilities. He could’ve just looked into the Barrier the whole time, and he might’ve seen the two of them; it would’ve made things a lot less complicated… Well he could still help Kim and Kaen to locate the wolves while trying to meet up with them again.

John [17:13]: Let me check where the wolves are, so you can hunt them down.

Looking at the Barrier with his Transreceptive Eye made John almost stop dead in his tracks. While the Barrier still had the same layout it had two days ago, there were things that were different. First, where the place looked desolate and overgrown before, it looked demolished and ransacked now, burning in various places, and corpses of the different wolves were strewn around. Second, there were new ‘enemies’ running around, one of them being some dark, muscular guy with burning skulls running around outside of the monastery. John was starting to really lose his cool now… how much could go wrong in one simple mission?!?

John [17:15]: WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON??? WHY IS THERE A MONK LOOKING SKULL DUDE RUNNING AROUND?!? WHERE ARE THE WOLVES?!? I’ll try to get the others, we’re coming to get you!

Sprinting up the stairs, he barrelled into someone he really didn’t want to meet right now.

James Calaway.

The guy that had created this Barrier. The fucking guy that was the sole reason John had started this mission, and now he was running into that guy while being split up from everyone but his pets.

As he was going to the ground along with John, John saw that he had been carrying a giant wooden box reminiscent of a casket that fell to the ground and cracked open. Inside that wooden container was a slim woman with fiery red hair. She was wearing a coif on her head, making her seem like a nun. She had her eyes closed and seemed to be ****.

John didn’t have any time to look at her more though, as he was picked up by the throat by James.