《Level to Live》Chapter 12. The Final Boss
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After we travelled south for another few miles, the others in the car began to notice the tremors as well.
They didn't notice them because they had become more perceptive. They noticed because the tremors had become stronger. At this point, it was hard not to notice.
Once every 10 minutes, like clockwork, the whole world shook as if it was a bell being wrung. The cracks that decorated the motorway widened, worming their way deeper into the ground. Sinkholes appeared more and more frequently.
Then, we had to stop. We didn't run out of fuel, or reach a dead-end... well, we did reach a dead-end of sorts.
To our horror, the road just stopped. Everything stopped. There was no going around because there was nowhere to go.
An unimaginably large sinkhole barred our way. To put it in perspective, if this sinkhole had appeared in London. There wouldn't be a London anymore, Just a massive crater where London used to be.
The hole itself was miles across and 100s meters deep. It was about the size of an impact crater you would expect to see if a meteor hit the earth. Only the impact was different to what a meteor leaves. This hole was equally deep at all points, as though someone had cut a massive circle out of the earth's surface. At one end of the hole, 4 smaller craters appeared to be attached to it.
We didn't talk when we saw the hole, not for a long while anyway. I just stared gormlessly into its depths. I wondered what would happen if I fell in. Actually, there was no need to wonder... I would surely die.
Craning my neck, I looked down the edges of the crater. They were smooth, as though someone had carved them with a knife.
All the way at the bottom of the crater, I could see a faint line of smashed concrete that stretched into the distance. And, when I looked really close, I saw what looked like a mangled road sign.
"That... That isn't the road we were meant to go on... is it?" I asked hopefully.
After some thought, Kashyap went back to the truck and pulled a wrinkled map from its glove compartment "I think so," He said as he unfurled the map.
We all crowded around, desperate to see if we had made a mistake with our directions somehow. Perhaps we had taken a left when we should have taken a right. Maybe we missed our exit and ended up at a nuclear test site we didn't know about.
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But, drawn on the map, as clear as day was a thin line that ran from London down England and to the Channel Tunnel. Clearly, we were in the right place. The road just wasn't here anymore.
"That looks different to the other sinkholes," August remarked.
"How so," I asked, eager for some sort of explanation.
"Well, usually stuff falls into a sinkhole. But everything in this one looks like it was compacted... or crushed into it." Said August.
I didn't know what to do with this information until I remembered the 4 smaller holes that were connected to this one. When it dawned on me, I was left terrified.
"You don't... you don't think this could be a footprint do you?" I asked nervously.
Everyone was quiet for a moment. The silence was so thick you could cut it. Finally, Kyle burst out into nervous laughter.
"Hahaha, c'mon, there's no way that's possible... right?" He sounded almost like he was asking himself that question. Testing the limits of how far his imagination could stretch before it broke.
No one replied to Kyle. It's not that we knew for sure that it was a footprint, only that we couldn't say for certain that it wasn't.
I got back into the pickup truck, and the car turned around, heading back the way we had come. In the front seat, Kyle and Kashyap wrestled over the map. They were trying to find another route that would take us around the 'footprint', but it was hard to tell whether or not that route would also be destroyed.
We spent the next few hours travelling aimlessly back and forth throughout the countryside of England. I felt like I was playing a game of snakes and ladders. Every time we thought we had found the right route, we were forced to turn around and go back to the start.
The reason for this is that there were more than one of these 'footprints'. Every 20 miles or so, we would run into another one and be forced to turn back.
When we stopped for lunch at the edge of one of the other 'footprints' I could tell Kashyap was pissed just by looking at him. I could practically see storm clouds brewing over his head. He had been driving since dawn, right after fighting a giant cat, so he must have been tired.
He didn't look like he was in the mood to talk, and neither did the other two. They both sat sullenly, leaning against opposite sides of the pickup truck.
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Out of sheer boredom, I left them to their sulking and wandered over to the edge of the 'Footprint'. Sure enough, when I looked down into it, I saw the crushed remnants of the road we were supposed to be taking.
Pulling my gaze out of the 'Footprint' I stared off into the distance. It was noon, and the sun was high above our heads. Just like yesterday, its colour was a strange pinkish-red. It didn't look evil, or ominous, just... different, unearthly.
I stared absentmindedly at a far off mountain range. Their white snowy peaks glittered dazzlingly beneath the noon sun.
These mountains were bigger than any I had ever seen before. And they swayed slightly...
Wait... they swayed. Last I checked, Mountains didn't do that. When I looked closer and strained my eyes. I could see the truth.
The mountains were moving. I couldn't tell how fast they were moving because of how enormous they were, but it had to be quick.
"Hey!" I shouted urgently, "Come have a look at this,"
Slowly, like the walking dead, the other three members of my illustrious group pulled themselves up off the ground and dandered over with no sense of urgency whatsoever.
"What is it?" August asked in annoyance.
I paid him no heed and just pointed towards the peaks that were growing more and more distant. "Look at those mountains," I told them.
Begrudgingly, They all turned to stare at the mountains. "What is it that I'm supposed to be seeing?" Kashyap asked.
Before I could answer, Kyle beat me to it. "They are moving," His voice was so soft it was almost a whisper.
After another few minutes of watching the mountains grow further away, August sighed in amazement, "Holy shit, you're right."
Then, Kashyap pointed out something none of us had noticed yet. "Those aren't mountains," he said slowly, sounding out each word as though they were foreign to him.
He was using his phone's camera like a makeshift telescope to zoom in on the distant peaks. Quietly, he took a picture and showed us what we were actually looking at.
The image was blurry and at glance, it didn't look any different than what I had seen with my own eyes.
"Doesn't that look like a castle?" Kyle asked bewildered.
When he said it, I could finally see what he meant. The tall snowy peaks were great marble towers and the mountain range itself was an enormous stone wall that stood miles high.
"I've never heard of a city that moves," I said.
When I said this, Kyle seemed to grapple with a thought. Conflicted on whether or not he should say it.
Finally, his curiosity seemed to win out, "What if... what if it was on the back of something?" He said while gesturing to the enormous footprint we had stopped beside.
It made sense. A sort of twisted fantastical sense that could only be applied during the apocalypse, along with all the other strange things I had seen since yesterday. But it did make sense.
"But, what kind of creature would you need to hold up a city?" Kashyap asked the most obvious question.
I looked thoughtful for a moment before replying, "Oh, it would have to be the Final Boss at least." I said half-joking, half-serious.
Kashyap laughed nervously, "Haha, yeah... The Final Boss,"
"How much Exp do you think that thing would give?" August asked greedily.
I thought about it for a moment, but I couldn't even begin to imagine what sort of level that creature might be.
"You'd have to get past the people living on its back first," Kyle said.
"True. Any crazy person that could live on the back of a beast like that shouldn't be weak. I wonder what it would be like to rule over that city." When August said this last part, his voice became hushed, almost like he was talking to himself.
I ignored this momentary craziness that I had come to expect from August and started walking back to the pickup truck.
"We had better get to the Channel before dark. I don't want to end up driving into one of those Footprints." I said.
...
Far off in the distance, so far away that most of its body was beneath the horizon line, a giant turtle swam. Its shell was so unimaginably large that it was home to a great city. A city whose towering walls had never been breached.
In the ocean around the turtle, monsters swarmed and writhed beneath the waves. Dashing their bodies hungrily against its shell and underbelly to no avail. They couldn't even slow it down.
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