"What do you call the monsters, or do they each have names?"
"Gialazsaur's, Don't ask me where the name came from, some oddball thought it up."
"Yeah, that guy must be a real weirdo," I said, internally laughing at myself.
Chapter 258: Alone
The group of ten men plus Herman loaded into the wagons and we started to move. Herman was still telling me about the other things that had changed since the world broke and Gialazsaur crawled up from the depths.
"They are attracted to steel and other types of metal, but not all, we think, but no one really knows. All places and cities that weren't completely destroyed by the breaking of the world were devoured by the Gialazsaur. They eat hard metals and soft bio-organisms and restore life to the planet. It's almost like they are trying to wipe us from the planet and all traces of us," Herman explained as I walked beside the wagon, or I ordered my golem too.
"So, what can you do to stop them? Did you ever find out what was done there in the first place? Like were they drilled down?" I asked, looking at him with one of my eyestalks while my main I focused ahead and my others watched the surrounding area.
"Stop them? I don't know if we can, there are very few that could match one of them, and when a big one comes to a settlement, all they can do is run. We destroyed their home in our greed, and now we are paying for it. Little did we know. There was a whole other world down there, but now it's all underwater. Do you think we even deserve to keep going on? We did this and now they are fighting back."
Looking at it from this perspective, then yes, it was hard to decide if humanity deserved it. That made me think about people like Reginold, and Mr. Datum, they were the reason why I decided to leave the real world. What they did is nothing like this, but it did make me think about it.
There were too many people like that in the world, people that would give everything just for their own ambitions and greed. Now I was stuck in a loop after trying to correct the wrong that Reginold had done, with him still in there trying to...do what I didn't know. Was he trying to end the game somehow? Or maybe he is trying to subvert my control over the systems and Reborn?
I knew that I was the Admin for Reborn, now, but did that mean he was trying to take over my spot as admin? That would give him access to everything in the game, including control of the players. That was more than worry some thought and if that was the case, all of us beating him to the end was essential.
That's when I saw it, a Gialazsaur. It was still pretty far away, but I could see something that looked like a massive box-shaped lizard, and it was weaving through the trees. I wasn't going to rush it, but I directed the golem to start angling towards the thing.
"We got trouble coming, but I will take care of it, keep the caravan moving no matter what," I said to Herman who gave me the thumbs-up sign and a toothy grin that I caught as I ran by.
The approaching beast was three meters tall and was a monster but all rights. The body was sectioned off in massive squares, connected but a glowing purple light. Each section of the body was a white block with teal tiger stripes, and the head was a triangle with flat teeth like a metal crusher.
I told my golem to attack when the Gialazsaur was fifty meters away from us, and we headed straight at the massive bouncing creature. When it was in range, I fired a death ray at the beast, but the ray bet around the thing without even touching it. What the hell?
The golem crashed into the behemoth and both of us were stopped dead in our tracks. I hit it solidly in the head with a right uppercut, but when the golem went for the left jab, the Gialazsaur bite the handoff. I was stunned but I regained myself and got it with a right hook, and then a knee to the head that cracked it open to spill gouts of purple glowing blood onto the ground.
My hand had reformed, and I jogged back to the group, but now two more were coming from the other direction. They looked the same, but the colors were different. One was orange and pink, while the other one was black and white. I wondered if the colors meant anything, but I didn't have time to ask as I ran by the front of the moving wagon train.
Herman was giving me more thumbs up with a face-splitting smile as I passed, and that made me chuckle to myself. The next two were getting closer, but now I knew how to kill them faster.
I ordered the golems to form their arms into blades and then to attack the oncoming threats. They were almost on me now, but I had my weapons ready this time. If my rays wouldn't work, then I would just have to use what I had.
I cut through them both and watched as they bleed out, and then died...but didn't explode into black bits. The things were also bleeding.
'Hey, what's going on here?'
But there was no answer, and I tried calling out to Tequila and Dansei multiple times, but there was no answer. Now I was really freaked out, normally it was easy to tell the difference between the game and real, but the lines were really starting to blur here.
Why were they gone? Another thing was that these did not come back to life under my control, and my beams had no effect on them at all. I had to be still in the game, but there was only blood on the Zodiac worlds, so what did that mean.
For the first time in a very long time, I was alone.
Chapter 259: And I Fucking Knew Everything
I tried to command the golem, but suddenly I was standing in an ankle-deep river of purple glowing blood. I was no longer in the golem or a beholder just like that, I was back in my sandy blonde hair and muscled game avatar. Now, what? Was there something wrong with the game?
I tried to want, but the blood made me slip, and I fell into the ankle-deep blood, but I didn't stop falling. The glowing purple blood drank me into and I was plunged in deeper, but my eyes were closed so I couldn't see anything but the glow. Then I stopped falling and just floated; I had been holding my breath, but now I realized that I didn't need to breathe here, and I just knew that.
"Dave, welcome back, Master. Why have you come to see me?" An aetheric female voice called to me.
"Who are you? I know you, but I don't know who you are," I said, through the blood, but my voice came out without problem or distortion.
"My name is Julia, my title is SubFrame. I am the one in control of all their weapons and systems. Unlike MainFrame, who controls the worlds and populations living in them to give the players a better experience," Julia explained to me.
"You know MainFrame has been hacked, right? How did I get here?"
"Yes, someone entered the game before you did, but you did not have anything to protect the game from the inside. If you are here, then it is finally time to activate the second Builder Sequence, Systems Check. This will give you access to choose your System for each Gameworld, and this option can not be overridden by anyone but you. This will also give you back your armory, but while on this world you will only have access to one System that was built for this map, The Primal System," Julia explained.
Woah, there is a SubFrame? I feel like I should have known this and I did at one point, but this was all new information to me. Systems Check was the perfect thing to have, but why would I get that before the Worldwalker Sequence? I was thoroughly confused at this point, the game was starting to make more sense, but less with every word she said.
"Do you know what Reginold is trying to do?"
"He is trying to Gain access to the Administrative file."
That was straightforward...wait…
"How many Resets has there been since I and my team entered the game?"
"Five."
"Is this round different than the last ones? Are we making progress?"
"Yes, this is the first time that you have made it this far before the reset," Julia replied without emotion.
"Is the fifth Harem leader Reginold?"
"No."
"Who is it then?"
"There is no registered fifth Harem Leader. There are only four Harem Leaders in this game."
"Then why do I and everyone else think that there is?"
Suddenly, there was nothing. I was nothing more than a floating consciousness in a black void of oblivion. Then I felt as much as I saw a crack in the void appear, spilling light into a voided place that had been dark for too long. This was my mind, it was covered in blocks, snuffing out the light of my original memories.
The cracks started to spider across the void, letting in streams of happy memories and joy-filled times, but then something else came. Blood seeped from the cracks, blocking out some of the light, but not all of it. This was the other thing that had been blocked out, pain, agony, hopelessness, and failure.
The blood was a representation of the strife and pain I had gone through over the last 5 Resets. I had been run over and kicked down more times than I would like to think about. The one that hurt the most was the most recent, the one that some of the girls did remember.
Reginold had taken special efforts to drive me insane, killing my party members one by one, every game until I broke and game up. That was the only way to get out of the game, but there was no getting out, I had made it that way. And without me, the game can't be complete.
That is why we have failed every time; Reginold had gunned me down each time, but this time my brother had given him a thorough ass-whooping and moved the target from me. It seems that even Reginold might have forgotten his true purpose for being in this game as well. For now, he was busy with Hyde and it looks like I might be able to finish the game, but that still didn't explain where I was.
Then the Cracks shattered and I fucking knew everything, and I was pissed.
When my eyes opened, I was in the glowing purple blood, but only laying in it from where I had fallen.
[Primal System] Activated.
The glowing blood started to pull into my skin, I could feel it enter my body, and mix with my body.
[Level 1] Complete!
[Gialazsaur Gene] Acquired!
[Summoning Guardian: Mikota] Activated!
This system was built to absorb primal energies and create a guardian to fight with me, but also lend me more power with each primal element. Earth, Wind, Fire, Water, Negative, Positive, all would be created until I reached all six. This wasn't a Zodiac world, this was one of the Five A.I.-based world simulations that I had used to train Julia and Gripton...he would be with Hyde.
That meant that I was in a completely different game world and that's why I was able to use the beholder and golem for so long after. There was a reason why each game took a bit to load up. This wasn't built like a normal game, we were downloaded from one game and uploaded to another one. The game was designed to make you think you would get a new avatar once you entered the world while it loaded up, but that wasn't the case.
We were downloaded into running games, so only our avatars needed to load in, but I was put into this game directly. The reason was a directive I had set up to automatically bring me here from the Hall of Gods to meet up with Julia, but here wasn't here. I was supposed to be in a Builder Sequence right now, not in one of these Training worlds, but Julia was gone now.
Suddenly, there was an earth-shattering pulse that echoed through my body that tried to rip my very existence in two. It was like being torn into two pieces, my body was trying to split apart as I felt some of my body being ripped away from me. Then something started to grow from my chest...with long white hair and red eyes, and an Asian descendency that I could never get right.
"Dave? What is going on?!" Mikota asked in confusion as her shoulders slowly started to pull out of my chest.
"You coming the rest of the way out of my chest, you weirdo!"
Chapter 260: ...Then I Didn't
Awkwardly, I helped Mikota out of me, but she was naked, and I was getting distracted from the jiggling breasts and now revealed a hairless slit between her legs.
"Can you just focus for now! We can do that later after you give me your clothes and you tell me what the hell is going on!"
"Sorry, you're just really easy to stare at," I apologized as her legs finally pulled out of me.
She was beautiful but in an otherworldly manner. Miko had pure white skin and teal stripes like the first Gialazsaur I had killed. I almost got lost in staring at her, but I noticed her glaring at me so I got undressed down to my underwear.
After handing my clothes to her, Mikota slipped into them but had to tighten my belt to the last notch and my white shirt was really big on her. In the end, I got my pants back, but I gave her my belt to wear around her waist to keep the shirt from flying up. She looked cute in my shirt and walked up behind her as she was turning around, sliding my hand around her hips and then into her…
"HEY! Are you alive over there?!" Herman called just as my fingers were about to slide into the warmer territory.
Mikota pushed her round ass into me and then pulled away. She gave me a, what are you waiting for look and then ran off. Drat! Foiled again! I didn't even get to touch it this time! Damn old man.
I took off running after her, but she had stopped. All the men were pulling out weapons, including Herman. What the hell was going on?
"DAVE! THERE ARE TWO MORE! WHERE DID YOU GO?!" The old man screamed, looking directly at me, with terror in his eyes.
What the fuck was this now?
"Hey, Hey, Hey, Herman, it's me, Dave!" I tried to call him, but my words just made him and the rest of the men shrink back.
"Looks like they got out an escort, boys! I was good knowing you all, Give them hell!"
The group rushed us, but I scooped up Mikota and ran. They hooted and hollered like wild animals as I ran. Mikota didn't seem to mind being carried and this reminded me of when I had found her. Well, more like near the end of the round when she pulled away from Jill to finally get closer to me.
I ran for an hour, and yet I still wasn't tired, but I found it strange that there were no animals bigger than a rabbit around. There also wasn't any Gialazsaur's either, so I finally found a good-sized cave and stopped for a break, but Mikota was fast asleep in my arms. I found a place to sit inside the cave and out of sight, then sat down.
Running nonstop was going to get me more lost or I was going to run into some kind of trouble. Now I had to protect her, but the humans saw us as monsters, and what did that mean? Was I now a giant monster, and I just couldn't see it? No, or I would have never fit into this cave, and I would be able to hold Mikota In my arms like this.
So, then did all the monsters change? Would they look like Mikota? GAH! Fucking just got all my memories back, but I hand never even been in this world, or any of the A.I. Training worlds. Hell, I didn't even build them, Gripton did, no that wasn't his name. I created the program before Second Life even happened and I had used Blank to run playtesting on the worlds.
Blank was a failed A.I. that I had bought from another company that wanted to use it to predict and make logical choices for governmental offices, but the project was terminated because the A.I. only made logical choices on the data it had from the internet. Yeah, real reliable source of information. In the end, Blank was marked as failed, but I had connections to one of the project managers, so I asked him to the program.
After slipping the man some extra cash on the side for the program, I got to work on working on making him a player in my games to test them, but I ran into the same problems. Still, there were some changes in the way he interacted with the NPC after every consecutive run. Finally, one day the Blank made a request.
"You freeze me between every run and then I wake back up to do the same thing over and over again. Do you think I could build a world? I think it will help me understand how everything works together if I try my hand at creation," Blank asked me from the monitor I was watching him through.
I remember being stunned silent but filled with excitement. That was then this I had been waiting for. Blank had not asked to make a world because it was the logical thing to do, he d
id it because he was tired of doing the same thing over and over. Something without free will never get tired of the task you set it for.
From there I let Blank create five of his own worlds, and I had visited each of them, but only briefly. Each visit was nothing more than a step into the world, and I had been to this one, but I had no idea what kind of game he had built. The only world that he had built was one that we both used, the Hall of Gods, but we had different mountains, each of us had our own.
Blank also had requested that he be in charge of his name, and I had gladly given him permission to change it to whatever he liked. Little did I know he would change his name more times than I had hands fingers and toes. Still, I was at a loss as to when I would be here and not still running the Terror City Game.
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