Chapter 408 – The first foe


    “Jo-ooo-ohn,” the being’s back creepily swung in a circle, the gills quivering as if they were tasting his name, “Ne-wm-a-n. Aaaah, as I said, we are just so stupid when we don’t listen to me. Stupid? We outthink all of you. Yes, by human standards stupid, you think wrongly - Don’t interrupt me?!” The creature screamed at the sky and then immediately slouched back into a hunchback. “You made us what I am.” It swayed towards the boat; where its feet touched the water, it turned pitch black, only slowly dispersing behind it. It looked like short-lived mold spores that failed to find feeding ground. Hopefully short-lived. The closer it got, the harder the air became to breathe.


    ‘What the fuck?’ John thought, this didn’t line up, this didn’t line up at all. Why would he have an aura damning his own kin? It was named closely to Thana’s aura. A coincidence? Just what were these Lorylim? ‘Undine, back into incorporeal form! Salamander, you weren’t touched by corruption right?’


    ‘Just the body, not the mind,’ Salamander thought. ‘It didn’t take proper root!’


    “Although we still were - are in there, are in there maybe? - in there, weren’t we?” Izha said to them. “Oh yes, Undine cut us out, she was smart. Memories burrowed under screams, so many delicious screams in my chorus, but we remember. Salamander was so prideful, wanted to fight, but when you wrestle with gods, we take something from you. Like the spores in the wind now we are in there,” it pointed at John’s head, “and we will never let one go unscarred, unbent, unchanged.”


    John shivered, feeling a worried glance from Rave coming his way. “Good thing I plan on killing you all anyway,” he tried to look confident, but the smile on his face quivered. How far did their influence into him reach? Were they just listening in? Was he now already corrupted beyond the songs and could no longer hear them anymore?


    “Just look at your hand, tell me what you see,” the avatar said, and John instinctively looked at his right.


    “I don’t sEe AnYtHing,” his ears suddenly popped and stopped hearing normally, as if someone had pressed cotton against them. There was a flash, as if someone had introduced a singular frame into his vision, where the veins on his arm all popped out like black worms crawling over his skin. His skin was revolting to him, as if he needed to peel it off.


    Suddenly his stomach acted up, and he hastened to the edge of the ship to empty it into the water. The bitter bile left a bitter taste in his mouth. When he thought he was done, to the sound of maddening laughter ringing in his bloodstream, the taste of blood filled his mouth and he spat it all out. The swirls of his displaced body fluids in the water formed the shapes of laughing eyes. He was feeling cold now; the feeling crawling in between his bones and muscles and on his skin intensified on and in his arm.


    ‘At least somewhat good news,’ he thought as he read the windows, his whole body shaking.


    “John!” Rave’s outcry was just the loudest one in a whole array and not just one of worry. A hand grabbed him by the shoulder, Eliza pulling him against her chest and away as Izha reached for him with long, boneless fingers that ended in dull stubs. When had it even come so close? It hadn’t, it was still swaying towards them. Its hand was reaching out of a hole in the air.


    Metra reacted immediately, as their only real defence against dimension bending magic. Ripping her halberd out of John’s inventory, she swung at the portal itself. Like a guillotine, she sliced off the retracting arm at the wrist. The severed limb turned into a cloud of dark spores that soon disintegrated completely.


    Izha turned his one eye at the stump as if it was waiting for something to happen to it. “Wrong body, wrong body, wrong body,” he complained, “such a wrong body. You won’t we us US US, ME!” A pause as his ribcage blew spores into the air in exasperation. “Take him, we are amused, just like they said. We are smart after all.” The rambling of the being continued, once more calm if only for singular syllables, as it swayed closer to the ship again. “We gave power to that one,” he pointer at Salamander, “made her different. Made her better, got here in return, got into your head. We like the essence of your soul. All shall be a messenger for that which is bound in perpetuity and slick with chaos.”


    “You insolent fuck,” Salamander growled, “this isn’t what I wanted!”


    Suddenly it was on the ship, as if somebody had just decided to put it there. Why had it been moving so slowly then? Unanswered, that remained.


    Body stretching and bowing over Salamander, its rib cage opened up and revealed a crawling mass of hands that stretched outside. They grappled at the air as they grew, ready to pull the fire elemental in. “You are a host, what you want is irrelevant.”


    “Okay, I have had enough of this creepy shit!” Rave shouted out, cat ears sprouting out. She was already wearing her battlesuit and blasted a load of light right into Izha’s face.


    “Shhach’kathr Qutar!” Izha cried out and jumped off the boat. The side of its face was burned off. “Weak body, weak, weak, weak body!” John did not like that it was chanting that about something that was level 110, absolutely not.


    “Because you were aware of the risk and so was he.”


    “To MYSELF,” Salamander returned, “you insufferable meathead. Did you know this would happen?”


    “You would need to be a fucking moron not to,” the answer came back just as aggressive; the mood was quickly heating up.


    “Shut up!” John shouted, and the bickering stopped. He looked at the group with glassy eyes, “Yes, I knew that something like this could happen, Salamander, because you are me and I am you. I still supported you because that is what you wanted, because deep down you also knew that this was a possibility and because I am also a crazy person, because just like you I want to beat the Lorylim.”


    He closed his eyes and only whispered, “And if I have to fight them, I have to understand how to resist them,” before going back to pondering. The crawling on his bones became a sound that pulsated in the rushing of his blood through his ears. The drum of his heart was but one beat.


    If the Lorylim were obeying the laws of this world, then this world must have had an answer to them. If Gaia was able to kill them, keeping them from meddling not only with the Abyss but also with the normal world, then there must have been some way. There had to be. Anything else would have meant that they were unstoppable and humanity would have never prospered in the first place.


    What was the answer?


    Nia couldn’t kill this one because it had integrated with Gamer’s Body. Undine couldn’t heal it because it was beyond her abilities. It was a purge resistant debuff, but that was only thinking in gaming terms. In reality there was always at least one more way to deal with infections that couldn’t be cured.


    He raised the arm, “Salamander, I need you to burn this from the elbow down, flesh from bone.” Everyone was looking at him as if he had gone crazy, “If that doesn’t work, we are going to cut it off.”


    “John,” Rave opened her mouth and let the unwillingness flow out, “are you SURE that’s the only way?”


    “We remove limbs with necrotic tissue to preserve the rest, I don’t think this is much different in principle,” he explained. “That aside, Gamer’s Body will probably give me a new one. I have never lost a whole arm before, but I have had my fair share of fatal injuries that were fixed before. As to why we are burning it first, Salamander cleansed herself with her fire, maybe it was has some properties that help?”


    Rave sighed, “Ya know, for once I kinda get why ya don’t want me to jump into whatever dangerous situation I fancy at the time. Ya got into this willingly and now ya gonna scorch your arm off.” The fact that she got on board with this rather easily was not due to a lack of worry but because she had grown up in a world that regularly saw fights to the death. Someone severing a limb to save his life was probably not a new sight for her.


    “Halfway willingly,” John managed to remark. With a course of action set, he felt like he had to do the usual and just banter about. What use would it be to take this too seriously?


    “Yeah, make me feel even fucking worse, why don’t you?” Salamander puffed and stomped her way over. John held the infected arm up in a way that, if photographed, would have earned him a nice ‘The Gamer is a nazi-supporter’ caption.


    Rave was holding onto his other hand with her own. They were warm, and her slender fingers wrapped around and interlocked with his. Her touch alone was calming. Aclysia also took hold of him, gently embracing his head.


    “We will be fine, right?” Aclysia asked.


    “I bet on that,” John answered as the lines on Salamander’s body once again turned from black to glowing yellow.


    “Yeah, your powers are super bullshit,” Rave’s hands clamped down around his, her words were not meant to just calm him down, “this will be fine.”


    “This will hurt a lot,” Salamander said.


    “I am not nai?ve enough to expect otherwise,” John closed his eyes; thankfully it was the middle of the day, so the light from the flames didn’t pierce through his lids until it was already too late to back out.