Kaiju- Battlefield Surgeon

by Matt Dinniman

  “Besides,” she added. “Your body and my body are not in that apartment. Not anymore. A while back, I woke up in my rig suddenly. We weren’t in the apartment. It was a warehouse with high ceilings. I asked him about it, and he told me we get moved to another facility the moment we’re captured. The way he explained it, it sounded like it was far away, maybe even another country. I don’t know. He wouldn’t say.”

  “But…” I said, my mind racing. “What about the others? Surely someone will talk. Tell them about the game, about us trapped here.”

  “Pssh,” Clara said, throwing up her hands in disgust. On the television screen, a Korean woman was sneaking into a bedroom while two people slept. She put her hand on the man’s mouth, waking him up. “You’re one of those optimistic types, aren’t you? It’s gonna be a long six months if you’re gonna spend the whole time being hopeful and whatnot. If they find out about the game, and if they somehow manage to get an agent in here, then what? Think about it. We are literally shoved up the ass of a giant lion. Nobody can even see we’re online. We’re not getting out of this base. And even if we could, nobody is coming. Let’s say they find us, and we tell them who we are. This isn’t the old days where they could figure out where the server is hosted. Sure, you can tell them the address of Anatoly’s apartment. But if they can’t find the server, they can’t shut the game down. And if they can’t find the rigs we’re in, nobody is coming to rescue us.”

  “Jesus,” I said. “So in 179 days, our rigs are going to run out of food for us?”

  “Shush,” she said suddenly, waving at me to be quiet, watching the screen intently. The woman was now kissing the man while his partner slept in the bed next to them. “I haven’t been able to watch in a week. Ji-yoo! You’re such a slut!”

  “Are you kidding me?” I said, pulling up the television menu. The countdown timer had been suspended. I snapped the screen off.

  Clara whirled on me, her face a mask of sudden rage.

  “Yes, all right? We both have 179 days before we stop getting food. I don’t know how long before we actually starve to death, but it’s probably a bit after that. And there is not a goddamned thing either of us can do about it. At least we’re here, in Anatoly’s base which has a television and a food box and furniture, unlike any of the others I’ve seen. Also, there won’t be anyone else here to torture us every day. And when we do starve to death, we won’t even feel it. We’ll just be gone, and you know what? I’m marking that as a win.”

  I shook my head. “There’s gotta be a way to get out of this game.”

  She sighed. “Jesus. You’re insufferable.” The television flipped back on, and she turned back to the screen. The scene had changed. The woman who’d been kissing the man in the bed was now kissing a different man. Clara gasped.

  “Wait,” I said. “That time you’d woken up. You said you were in a warehouse? Do you know why you left the game?”

  She nodded. She didn’t turn away from the screen. “It was the end of the last season. They’d used up all the available characters, and the only way to reset it all was to finish the game and restart. He and the Canadian and Frank, they had this big battle with their kaiju, and the game ended, a bunch of credits showed up on the screen, and I woke up in my rig. He was right there though, and I got thrown back into the game. I refused to reroll my character for a long time, but he did something so I just popped back in as a fae again. Almost everyone was the same, though SmashSouth went from one of those fish guys to the nerve agent, and the Canadian went from one of those gremlins to one of those wolf people. All the other clients who were staying on remained the same. Now be quiet…”

  “So if we beat the game, we get out?” I asked. “Is that right?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “But Anatoly said in co-op mode it’s almost impossible with three players. That means it is impossible with two. And by yourself, well. You wouldn’t even be able to get into the rift with just one player. Anatoly had leveled himself up to the high fifties. So had Frank and the Canadian. All three of them were really into the game. Guys like SmashSouth, Princess, and that Mexican dude weren’t into it at all. They just wanted to do their thing.”

  “Beat the game,” I repeated, not listening to her anymore.

  I thought of Ruth, of Mary. I had six months. I was going to die. A lot. There was no way around that. I could do this.

  In my stomach, Banksy rumbled. Daddy, he said. I can help you. But I gotta eat first.

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “I have an idea to get you food.”

  I pulled the gun off my shoulder, and I blew Clara’s head clean off.

  Chapter 12

  I threw my attribute point into durability as I butchered Clara’s body. I had to stop and breathe in and out to keep my gorge down. This was the most disgusting thing I had ever done. I only got a tiny amount of experience from killing her, which indicated she was indeed only level 1 like she claimed. The countdown timer over her corpse disappeared the moment I took my hand scalpel to her flesh.

  I was going to need that extra durability point. I wouldn’t be able to eat her flesh. This game probably had some sort of antidote potion that cured poison, but I didn’t have access to it. I might be able to cure myself over and over until the poisoning ran out, but I didn’t know if poison did run out. Some games it did, some didn’t. If it didn’t run out, then I needed to avoid feeding Banksy via my own mouth.

  Something odd happened as I cut Clara’s left arm off her body. A menu popped up over the severed arm.

  Upcycle Compatible left arm?

  +3 Charm

  -2 Strength

  -3 Deftness

  +Charm Parasite

  It took several moments for me to realize what that meant. I could switch my left arm with her left arm. None of the other parts seemed to be compatible. I didn’t know if it was a random drop or what, but either way it was a terrible trade-off. Also, her arm was less than half the size of my current arm.

  Clara zapped back into the room, screaming. She pulled herself into a ball on the floor and started whimpering.

  I’d moved her corpse to the kitchen counter, and I looked up from my work.

  “So, when you were dead. When SmashSouth had killed you, I mean. He said you picked me. Not him. You were a fan of my art.”

  She made a growling noise. “You could’ve fucking asked me. Christ, dude.” She paused, panting. I knew the feeling. A minute later she continued. “He thought it would be funny to make me choose. He threw a bunch of photos in front of me and told me to pick my favorite. I picked one. It turned out to be yours.”

  “Was it the mural on the side of the haunted house? The one with the revenant?”

  “No,” she said. “It was the tire tracks going across the heart made out of glass.”

  My heart skipped at that. It felt as if I’d been punched. But she couldn’t possibly know what that mural meant, not to me.

  “I’m sorry,” I said after a few moments. I couldn’t decide if I really was sorry or not. I needed her meat. I could only feed Banksy with food I’d killed myself. I didn’t know how much food it took to get him up to level 5, but I would keep doing it until he could go out on his own.

  Her eyes widened as she finally noticed I was butchering her own corpse.

  “What the fuck?” she said. “What is wrong with you?”

  “I need to level my worm up. He levels from eating, not killing, but it has to be food I’ve killed myself. SmashSouth disappeared before I could get some meat off him.”

  “For fuck’s sake, asshole,” she said. She grumbled something under her breath. She was putting on an air of anger, but her entire body trembled. She looked at me with eyes that betrayed fear. “I should have known he’d have given you a worm. Well guess what, moron? You’re not going to be able to feed it. Your kind can’t eat. You’ll die of poisoning before the food even hits the stomach.”

  I sighed. I’d taken the meatiest part of her body, her ass cheek muscle, and I slic
ed long, thin strips. I had to unsummon my scalpel before I lost more soul points, and my bar was worryingly low. I needed to find a real knife, one that didn’t use my magic. I was going to need the points.

  “I know,” I said. “Stay close. I’m going to need your help with this next part.”

  ***

  I waited until Banksy died one more time. Thankfully, the meat didn’t suffer any sort of rot or degradation. Clara sat, curled up in a huff, grumbling to herself. Her Korean soap opera ended and another one started, and she watched it with impassive eyes. Eventually she turned away, but left it on.

  I didn’t want her to see, but I couldn’t stand it anymore. I pulled up the interface and changed the channel, moving to my wife’s channel to see what Mary was up to.

  Signal Lost.

  I switched to my daughter’s channel.

  Signal Lost.

  A simultaneous joy and wave of utter loss crashed onto me. SmashSouth had done it. He’d broken the connection when he’d fiddled with it.

  I was free. I was horrified that I felt that way, but I was. My wife and my daughter were both my hope and my crutch. I desperately wanted to check in on them, but this bizarre feeling of happiness settled. It was almost as if they were trapped in here with me, but now they had been broken out.

  Or maybe you’re just a coward, and it’s easier to deal with this without having to think about your responsibilities.

  “Two channels,” Clara muttered from her position on the couch. “Let me guess. Your perfect wife and your perfect kid. They usually only spring for one. You should be glad it’s all gone to shit. Usually they bring them in here, too. Especially if you misbehave.”

  “What? What do you know about all this?” I asked, but she refused to talk more about it.

  Banksy eventually groaned and died, and I re-upped my soul points with his death. I used a few of them to top up my health. Banksy regenerated, whimpering in my mind.

  “Okay,” I said. “It’s time.”

  I sat in the recliner by the fireplace.

  Clara sighed and got up from the couch, coming to kneel before me. “This isn’t going to work,” she said. I’d laid out long strips of the meat for her to grab.

  “Maybe not,” I said as I pulled my ragged shirt off. “If it doesn’t, then I’ll just have to poison myself and try to sustain my health long enough for him to eat.”

  I summoned my hand scalpel.

  “Banksy,” I said. “You remember the plan?”

  Yes, Daddy. I’m scared.

  “Don’t worry. Just stay as far back as you can until I tell you.”

  “You are crazy,” Clara said.

  With my left hand, I grasped a handful of my gray, mottled skin around my stomach. I plunged my scalpel into the flesh. I sliced long and hurriedly across my own midriff.

  Pain. Ripping, tearing, overwhelming pain.

  I screamed, fighting the urge to double over. My life force plummeted as I arched my back instead. I felt my insides open, yawning like a mouth. I cast Reconstitute, offering only a few points into the healing. Too much, and my stomach would close on its own. It did not ease the lightning agony.

  “Do it,” I growled. “Banksy, come get it.”

  “Oh my god,” Clara panted as she grasped a handful of her own corpse meat and shoved it into my open belly. I screamed with a new wave of pain.

  You cut too low, Banksy said. It’s really far. Maybe you can do it again but higher this time.

  “I don’t think anything is happening,” Clara said.

  “Get the fuck down there,” I growled, healing myself again. I was fighting a losing battle as my health bobbed down. In just a few more seconds, I wouldn’t be able to heal the wound enough to keep it from killing me.

  Okay, Daddy. I’m scared to go in the tube though. Hang on.

  A terrible five seconds passed. Clara clenched her eyes closed, wrist deep in my stomach. Then, her eyes snapped open.

  “I can feel it,” she said. “I can feel it eating.”

  This lady is delicious, Daddy. This is fairy meat. I get a bonus. I feel like I am getting stronger.

  Banksy, Gut Hook is now level 2

  Your familiar is full.

  I can’t eat anymore, Daddy. Not for at least an hour.

  “Okay, pull out, pull out,” I said.

  Clara looked up at me, suddenly grinning. The look startled me, even through the pain. It was like a switch had been flipped, and she was a different person.

  “Turnabout is fair play,” she said. “If you get to level up, so do I.”

  With a push that I felt deep, deep inside me, she lunged forward, sinking to her elbow in my guts. Suddenly her feet were pressed against the chair, and she grunted as she pulled everything she could out of me. My insides shifted, slopping out of my body and onto the floor like a clog sucked out of a drain.

  I died screaming.

  ***

  I shouldn’t have been mad. She was a level 1, and I was a level 6 who’d already killed her once. It was only fair. Still, I was mad. I was pissed. I couldn’t trust her, and she couldn’t trust me. I’d deserved it. But I still found myself screaming expletives at her as I regenerated, the pain of the death sequence dwarfing anything she could’ve done to me. This was my ninth death.

  “I went up to level 3,” she said, ignoring my insults. She sat cross-legged on the counter next to the butchered remains of her corpse from earlier. The slabs of meat I’d cut off her body remained piled on the counter, but her bones and guts were gone. Her skin and the arm I could swap out remained, piled neatly next to the meat. “I’m almost to four. That means you’re probably really level six or seven if my math is correct. Did your pet level up? Did it work?”

  I groaned, rolling over onto my side. Banksy thrashed about within me. I didn’t need to examine his properties to know he’d gotten bigger.

  “It worked,” I said finally. “But we gotta do it again. He only went up one level. I need him at level 5 so he can leave my body.”

  She sighed, leaping off the counter. The diminutive woman started to pace back and forth.

  “Okay, then,” she said. “I was afraid of that. You’re right, we do need to do it again, but there’s a problem.” She thumbed at the pile over her shoulder. “That’s level 1 meat, so it won’t be as effective. So you gotta let me kill you again. I’ll go up another level, maybe two. Then you kill me and take my meat, and then we’ll try it again. This time though, I promise I won’t kill you. When you’re ready, we’ll stuff your cavities with as much Clara spam as we can. We’ll cut you open, stuff you like a turkey, and sew you back up. Then mister pet worm can eat whenever he’s hungry, and it should be enough food to level him up to five. After that we can start exploring.

  “But we have to be smart about it,” she continued as I just stared at her dumbly. “This is how the endgame works. You gotta get a key to the rift. There are literally hundreds of different ways to get one. And how you get it has a major effect on what happens. Supposedly there are thousands of different endings. But before you can even worry about the key, you need to be able to control your guardian. When Anatoly finished the game before, they had three guardians waiting at the rift and had somehow enticed most of the others to the area, too. Pretty much all the demons in the game attack at this point, including all the demon princes and barons and kings and queens. It’s pure chaos. The other kaiju held them off while Anatoly and the other two went into the rift. I didn’t go in with them, so I don’t know what happens in there. But it took about two days. They eventually won, and the game reset. Anatoly told me it was next to impossible with three kaiju. They couldn’t do it, so he’d had to employ some sort of cheat. It was meant to be done with five or six.”

  I just continued to stare at her. It was odd how her personality changed. One moment she was the meek fairy girl trapped with me, utterly devoid of motivation or hope. With SmashSouth she was the firm sidekick, confident but vicious. He’d seemed to imply that she actual
ly enjoyed it here. And now she’d changed again, into whatever this was. What, I wondered, was the real Clara?

  “So you’ve changed your mind about helping me? What’s different?”

  “That was before I saw what you were willing to go through to get there. We got six months. Let’s win this game.”

  Part 2 – The Hinterland

  Chapter 13

  Feedings Left: 160

  It took two and a half weeks to get Banksy to level 5 using Clara’s plan. He’d hit level 4 easily, but it took much longer than expected to get up to 5. The problem was the worm also lost half of his progress to the next level when he died.

  Instead of letting Clara kill me, I introduced her to my method of crab fishing. That garnered a cavalcade of insults once she realized I could’ve used crabs instead of her as my method of feeding Banksy. They gave so little experience, however, and she eventually allowed me to go back to the original plan of using her for meat.

  We tried cutting off her arm instead of killing her outright. It did not work. While she regenerated quickly, she did not have a heal spell. The act of cutting off her arm and cauterizing the wound still killed her anyway. I could cast my Reconstitute on her, but it didn’t actually heal her. I wasn’t sure why. I suspected it had something to do with her being a wind and celestial magic-user. Or maybe because I was some sort of pseudo undead creature.

  She managed to get to the cusp of level five with the crabs before they stopped giving her experience. I reluctantly allowed her to kill me one more time to put her over the edge.

  I killed her twice, and my experience only budged up a moderate amount. Her plan to “stuff me like a turkey” didn’t work as intended, and the fairy meat dissolved the moment I cast Reconstitute on myself.

  Upon level-up, Clara gave herself a wind magic spell called Nipple. I had no idea why the spell was called that, but she could cast it on either me or herself. It had the effect of negating the Unsteady debuff one sometimes obtained when they took a lot of damage. But it also had the effect of greatly dulling pain, and it made the process of feeding Banksy somewhat more bearable. Somewhat.