Chapter 31 – Robbie Rotten

Current Location: The Ponderous Peat

Ray had joined everyone else in looking at Harry with deep concern. Why did Cassie think he smelled like rotten flesh?

Maybe he had some bits of zombie gore or blood still splattered on him after the battles.

Or worse, maybe he’d been bitten and had been concealing the fact that he was slowly turning into a zombie this whole time.

Harry examined himself. Brent half expected him to reveal a massive bite wound under his shirt.

Wait, that wasn’t how zombies worked in this world. He would have turned into a blob and exploded already if that was the case.

Instead the man lifted his collar up to his nose, sniffed it, then crouched and did the same with his pants.

“Right, so it isn’t my clothes. Then- ah!”

Harry took off his backpack and dumped out… the corpse of the rabbit Ray had shot earlier.

Almost a day earlier, in fact. It was looking a little bloated, and a blackened crust had formed around the bullet hole in its head, likely congealed blood.

The smell suddenly reached Brent’s nose, and he recoiled along with everyone else.

“Ew! Ew! And double ew!” Karisma squeaked.

“Crikey, but I completely forgot I had that in there. Looks like we won’t be eating it anymore, eh?” Harry kicked it away, where it started to sink into the mud.

“Forget about eating it, you need to clean out your entire backpack!” she responded.

“It could be worse,” Ray pointed out. “Imagine if we had left it for a few more days.”

“Lucky for us she noticed,” Reisa remarked.

“I’m more surprised that you didn’t. That thing is reeking.” The fox-girl pinched her nose.

Brent was just feeling really grossed out, but Cassie looked like she was about to pass out. Again.

Hm. Perhaps her lineage granted her a more acute sense of smell.

Brent thought he’d do her a favor and kick the rabbit corpse farther away, but then he had an idea. He went over and picked it up.

“Uh, Brent? What are you doing?” Karisma asked.

“Putting things to the test,” he replied. He walked up to the threshold where the storm began, and tossed the rabbit through.

He flinched reflexively, but the rabbit didn’t immediately explode or anything like that as it passed into the zone.

It landed on the ground on the other side. Brent watched it for a few seconds, and nothing seemed to happen. Maybe the field only had an effect on living creatures.

He waited a bit longer, and… did it seem slightly smaller?

He leaned in for a closer look, then stopped himself as he realized his nose was about to cross over. Yikes, that was close.

This was close enough. Brent could see several splotches on the body where the fur had disappeared, and the skin looked like it was being worn away. A soft sizzling sound could be heard whenever one of the raindrops hit it.

Ah. The body was slowly being dissolved by a literal rain of acid. Brent went back and relayed this information to the others.

“You didn’t have to do that, you know,” Cassie said dryly, “M- Donis already made one of us go in to test the effects. You take 1 point of damage for every 5 seconds you stay in the rain.”

“Oh.” Brent felt really dumb now. “Uh… so what else do you know?”

“While we were on the move he liked to talk a lot, mostly to himself. I mean, sometimes he’d command us to answer questions, but it was mostly monologuing. It sounded like he expected to become the ruler of the world or something once he won the game, and he was thinking out loud about what he’d do.”

Right, Dombey Uno did say that the last contestant alive would be granted their deepest desire or wish. While Brent was not 100% convinced that this was true, there were many players out there who were.

Now Donis sounded like someone they really didn’t want to win. Even if there wasn’t some kind of magical wish granting mechanism at the end, he could wreak havoc back on Earth just from the mind control ability he already had. It was basically like his wish had been granted already.

“What kind of guns does he have? What are his slave people using?” Ray asked.

“Uh… I don’t know what kind they were. If we had a weapon already he just had us keep using it.” She indicated the bow. “I think some of the girls had machine guns. He definitely had one that he used.”

“So undetermined automatics,” Ray muttered to himself, then turned to Brent. “Question for you now: Can you use that same trick you did on her to break the control on the others?”

Brent thought for a bit, but was forced to admit that he couldn’t replicate that feat. “No. It needs some memory from their past, and I don’t know any of them.”

Well, he’d ‘met’ Connie, but as their interaction had mainly consisted of him running and hiding there wasn’t much to go off of there.

Ugh. If this was more like the worlds in his novels he’d have gotten a skill called [Mental Liberation] or something like that which he could just activate to do it again.

Ray shrugged. “Then I guess we’re back to fight or flight if we run into another one.” He looked at Karisma and Harry. “I know some of you would prefer the latter, but if all of his girls are this bad at fighting it would be better to just take them out and save us a lot of grief. No offense,” he said in an aside to Cassie.

“Hey, I didn’t say that we can’t break the control at all,” Brent argued. “If we kill Donis it might break it for all of them, or at least make it so they don’t get new orders.”

“This is true,” Reisa chimed in, “These spells never outlive their caster.”

“That’s great Miss magician, but I can almost guarantee his minions will be under standing orders to stop us from doing that. They’ll get in the way, and won’t stop until we’re dead or they are.”

Squelch. Ray noticed he’d put his foot down in a particularly moist patch of ground, and he stepped away, throwing up his hands and sighing. “Look, I’m not trying to be the bad guy here. I want you guys to be prepared to kill if that’s what needs to be done, if you end up in a situation where there’s no other way. I think there’s a good chance that’s going to happen. That’s the kind of game we’ve been thrown into. Not everyone is going to make it out alive.”

Ray looked around, but nobody had a response.

Eventually, Cassie broke the silence. “Hey, I’m sure you’ve got a ton more questions for me. But I think I’m gonna just… take another little nap here.” Her eyes drooped shut.

“Yeah, go ahead. We’ll wake you up if anything happens,” Karisma said.

--break--

Nothing happened in the intervening time, nothing of import anyway.

The five, no six of them were still in the clearing on the edge of the Halo, though they had inched a bit further away from that purple threshold now that they knew of its acidic nature. The clearing had plenty of fallen logs and rocks to sit on, but Brent couldn’t relax and take a nap himself. Any time now the other shoe would drop and the circle would start contracting again.

The forest canopy was thinner here, so they could see the sun rising higher.

Nobody had eaten anything, so they decided to have an impromptu brunch of sorts as Cassie rested.

Brent wolfed down a Dombey-Tart, which again left a dry feeling in his mouth and throat. Ugh. He took a sip from a water bottle to relieve it, then went in search of more fulfilling fare. Oh! Maybe there was a filter for food so he wouldn’t have to search manually. Brent looked at the menu, guessing food would be in either “Consumables” or “Other”.

Inventory [Consumables]

Monstrous Energy Drink (2)

Great Valley Mix Bar (8)

Baked Beans (3)

Dombey-Tart (2)

Potato (5)

Bingo. That was maybe the one convenient aspect of this whole system.

The energy drinks he knew would give him Adrenaline, but he was at full health right now so he didn’t need it.

He took out a can of baked beans, and noticed that it lacked the metal tab that would make it easy to open. “Does anyone have a can opener?”

Reisa looked clueless, which made sense. They probably didn’t exist in her world.

“Now that you mention it, no,” Harry replied.

“Oh shoot. I have a bunch of canned foods too,” Karisma said. “I can’t believe we never bothered to look for one.”

There might have been one in any of the houses they’d looked through, but they were all outside of the Halo now.

Big missed opportunity there. Were all the cans they were carrying all dead weight then?

No, Brent wasn’t about to give up there.

Weapon Tactical Combat Knife

He set the can down on a rock and started stabbing at the edges of the lid. Tink. Tink. That was how can openers worked, right? You basically just cut around the edge until you could pull out the lid.

Then he saw that the label was upside down. He turned it over and groaned.

“Wait, Brent! I don’t think you need a can opener for these!” Karisma had taken out one of her own cans. “Mine has a tab, so unless yours doesn’t-”

“No, it does.” Brent facepalmed. “It was on the other side.” Maybe he was a little tired too.

“Nice,” Ray quipped sarcastically as he munched on some kind of burger.

“Oi, what is that?” Harry pointed at him. “Don’t tell me there’s a Macca’s on this island.”

“What? Oh, this.” Ray opened it up to reveal a center of deli meat. “It’s a ham sandwich. Came in a clear plastic thing. I don’t know any brand that does this specifically.”

“What is ‘Maccas’?” Karisma asked.

“You don’t know? World famous fast food place. Golden arches.” Harry mimed a sign with his hands. “Ring any bells?”

Meanwhile, Brent had to hold the can of beans a little out away from him as he ate out of it, as some of the goop was leaking out the holes in the bottom and he didn’t want to get any drops on his pants.

Cassie woke up in the midst of their eating, smelling the food around her which was admittedly pretty mundane fare. But anything looked good on an empty stomach.

Karisma showered her with stuff: food, water, medical supplies.

The fox-girl was a lot more receptive after she’d had a bite of some delicious (albeit room temperature) ravioli, and she exchanged names with the rest of the group.

“So uh, Karisma was it?” Cassie said, wiping her mouth, “I’m really thankful for the supplies but you should probably hold onto them for now. I lost my bag so I have nowhere to put them.”

“Nowhere? Not even pockets?” Harry asked. “Though I wouldn’t recommend putting ravioli in your pockets. Ravioli, ravioli, what’s in the pocketoli…”

“I have small pockets, yeah.” She patted her skirt. “I can carry a couple snack bars. And maybe a few arrows?” She looked at Reisa, who was clearly carrying quite a lot.

The elf was not as forthcoming. “Instead of that, perhaps you should consider switching to a different weapon than the bow?” she suggested.

“Uh… no, I’m good.”

“Y-” Reisa started, then took a moment to compose herself. “You are most certainly not good. We spoke of this before. You are the exact opposite of good.”

Cassie rolled her eyes. “Oh, please. Anyone would look bad compared to you.”

“Uh, you’re not relatively bad though. You’re just… bad,” Brent said, speaking from experience.

He wasn’t a member of a guild in Eternity Online, so whenever a new party quest or raid came out he had to team up with random strangers, who were often under-geared or had a crappy build that didn’t suit their class. His usual reaction was just to kick them or find another party, but that wasn’t really an option here.

“Wow, everyone’s ganging up on me huh.” Cassie clutched the bow tighter. Hm, that was a lot like Reisa.

“I don’t want to gang up on you, but like, why is it so important to use a bow?” Karisma asked.

“It’s because- I just wanted to be like-” Cassie flushed red and looked away. “Never mind. I’ll take a gun or whatever you’ve got.”

After further deliberation it was found that she had even less experience with guns than with bows, so giving her a firearm would be more of a hazard to everyone else.

It made sense, as she really was about the same age as Brent, still a student as the uniform implied.

Brent wondered what that said about him, that he’d gotten accustomed to violence after only a short while. Maybe it was the video games? Nah, that was stupid.

In the end he just gave her his baseball bat. He had actual guns after all, and if it came to a melee battle he still had the knife.

After packing up, they looked at the Map and decided to continue their southward trek.

--break--

They entered a gloomier area, the trees growing in tighter clusters and not letting as much light through the canopy. The ground was drier, so their shoes couldn’t get soaked or sucked into the mud. At least not any more than they already had been. Brent could feel small spots of moisture in his socks, and just had to hope they’d dry out at some point.

He thought he’d start off with some questions for Cassie, this time to satisfy his own personal interest.

“Are you and Reisa from the same world?”

“No,” they both answered within a split second of each other. Huh.

“She’s from some kind of, uh, weird medieval fantasy world while I’m from the modern world.”

That was also what Brent was thinking, but hearing someone else say it he realized it was rather egocentric.

“Uh, it’s more like ‘a’ modern world, not ‘the’ modern world,” Brent corrected her, “I don’t think the world you come from is the same as ours. We don’t have people with fox ears.“

Well, except at furry conventions, but that wasn’t a discussion he felt like having at the moment.

“We don’t have people with… whatever kind of ears those are,” Cassie gesticulated vaguely.

“Human ears?” Ray deadpanned.

“They’re all small and hairless and wrinkled…”

That was an interesting statement. Brent had never thought of his ears in those terms, but from Cassie’s perspective that’s probably how they seemed. Hm, what did she think about Reisa’s ears then?

Karisma spoke up first. “What’s it like where you’re from? Do they have like, cars, or phones?”

“I-” Cassie stopped, biting her lip. “Ugh. I shouldn’t be telling you this stuff. I shouldn’t even be talking to you since we’re going to have to fight anyway.”

“Are you going to try to run away again? Please don’t,” Karisma said. “You’re safer sticking with us.”

“If she wants to go, just let her,” Ray said, “It’s not like she’s gonna be useful to us in a fight.”

This earned him mean looks from all three girls. “I’m kidding. Mostly,” he added.

What a ladies man.

Fortunately, Cassie decided not to try to run away again, in spite of Ray’s divisive remarks.

Brent took hold of the conversation again. “From the beginning, you seemed pretty certain we’re going to have to fight each other no matter what. How do you know that? Have you been in one of these games before?”

“...no,” Cassie finally said, “I’ve only read about them in books, and that’s how they usually go.”

“There are books from your world about this? So people there know that this is going on?” A small speck of hope grew in Brent. If some authority or organization was aware of people being transported to this world, they might be working to stop it, and that meant there was a chance of being rescued.

“No, not this specifically...” Cassie sighed, turning red. “Okay, they’re just fictional books in different settings. But it’s the same type of game!”

Ah. So she was a fan of the battle royale genre of novels. Brent made the connection quickly as a fellow reader, although not quite the same genre.

“So uh, these books have any ideas on how to escape?” Harry asked.

Cassie scratched her head. “Hm… In this one series the whole arena was actually in a giant dome, that was covered with screens to make it seem like it was outside. They escaped by going to the edge and using some special tools to open a hole in the dome.”

Brent called up the Map.

Unfortunately, the safe zone circle by now had shrunken to an area that was quite far from any edge of the Map, assuming that was where the edge of the dome was. Or cube, considering that the Map was square.

Harry, who hadn’t looked at the Map yet, still had his hopes. “What kind of special tools?”

“Ugh, I can’t remember. Some kind of electrical thingy?”

“We have like, zero electrical thingies,” Karisma reported. “Or I do, at least.“

Well, now he knew Cassie’s world had electricity at least.

Brent had a flashlight and Ray had a laser sight which technically ran on electricity, but neither of those seemed likely to do the trick.

It was a moot point anyway, as to get to the edge they’d have to trudge a long way through the acid rain.

“Wait!” Reisa hissed. “Someone’s up ahead.”

They all stopped at the warning.

Brent hastily closed his map. Ugh, he’d gotten distracted by the conversation and everything and hadn’t been keeping a lookout.

Brent squinted, and glimpsed the silhouette of a figure some distance into the gloom, a woman. She turned to face them, and even from this far away he could see the red glint in her eyes.

Ray sighed. “Here we go again.”