Collide Gamer

“We will find him here,” Lorelei said.

Rare was it that the seer said something that wasn’t veiled in symbolism. The certainty spread a sense of excitement through the group. “Fucking finally!” Eliana cussed.

“You just joined the search yesterday,” Lee pointed out.

“And it has been fucking boring!” the pretty little psycho declared.

Nia tilted her head in confusion. “I think it is tolerable when I am with you.”

“…Fucking shit, that’s so sweet I don’t know what to do with that.” Eliana kicked a rock down the mountain trail. “Let’s just fucking go already?”

The Creator Puppet laughed and took his first step down the trail. “Yeah, let’s try to wrap this up.”

To say John was tired of chasing portals was not entirely true. With three bodies and his lovely ladies around, even this task became bearable. He was, however, mentally in a different space. They were three days out from the wedding now. Their time window to solve this was closing. He would be happy to have this issue wrapped up.

They were in the middle of the Appalachian Trail. There was no real civilization around for kilometres in every direction. The wilderness was only interrupted by a path some construction crew had haphazardly reinforced with a limited amount of gravel. Finding their ‘Realmbreaker’ out here seemed unlikely, yet it was every bit as likely as every other spot in the entirety of the USA.

‘I thought Lee gave me bullshit amounts of travelling, but man have I been feeling limited this last week. Really made me aware how rarely I go out into the sticks.’ The Gamer looked around at his travelling party. Lee and Lorelei walked at the heart of the group, protected by everyone else.

That everyone else consisted of Nathalia, Nia, Moira, Nahoa and, now, Eliana. That last one of their number had been added courtesy of Devos’ joining.

The Mite King walked ahead of the group, trusting them with his back. He wandered the mundane in a shroud of magic that would cover him from the gaze of mundanes. That he openly displayed this level of intel-suppression magic was calming and yet disquieting. There was a consistent eeriness to the alien monarch. John just didn’t know what he was truly capable of.

He was at least confident enough that the combination of Nia, Nathalia and Eliana would be capable of dealing with him. If they weren’t… well, then he couldn’t be blamed for being underprepared.

The gravel crunched under their steps. Few feet fell on this path every year, especially at this time of year. Those among them that breathed created small clouds that soon faded into the wider air. The world was quiet.

“There’s an Illusion Barrier here,” Lee informed them.

“Then in we go.” The Gamer put his hand up, then they all moved into the space.

The portal before them was like all others before. Too tall, too wide, and too stable for anything besides a Latebloomer to create. Space around it was distorted. That which should have been visible in its place was flickering around the edges. The brown of the forest wobbled like a fata morgana or a myriad of candleflames placed next to one another.

The world beyond the portal was simple, another display of rolling green hills. The plains were almost too flat.

“I have found him.” Lorelei’s words were the final assurance John had wanted. “There is a cabin up ahead, an emergency shelter for wanderers. He has sought refuge there.”

“Alright… Nia, I hate to make this request, but can you stay right here and try to be as little blank as possible?”

“I understand,” the pariah assured with a nod.

“Devos, as we agreed, I ask you to wait here with her.”

“As agreed,” the Mite King answered.

“Eliana, Moira, Nathalia, please wait here too… you can be a bit menacing.”

Eliana and Nathalia shrugged, while Moira, standing between them, looked left, then right, then left again. A long, disheartened sigh escaped her. “Whatever you reckon,” she surrendered to his point.

John gave her a reassuring smile. “You’re not as intense as those two, but we are dealing with a – potentially – anxious wreck here.”

“Just… do your best,” the Warden requested. “Such a tortured soul requires all the grace it can be offered.”

John nodded. With him now were Nahoa, Lorelei and Lee. The demigoddess pulled a syringe out of her inventory as they walked, then hid it in her jacket. Sedating him was their last ditch effort. If possible, he wanted their relationship to not start off with a betrayal, but he wasn’t above that measure if it meant stopping someone from tearing reality rifts open the continent over.

Some ends justified some means.

The cabin was just a few steps ahead, hidden between some trees and brambles. It was a wooden cabin with minimalistic windows on a cheaply poured concrete foundation. John let Lorelei lead. The seer walked up to the door and gingerly knocked.

“W-who’s there?!” The voice on the other side was exactly what John expected. Jumpy, high-pitched, muffled, and all too anxious for this world.

“I am Lorelei Varnik of the Lady’s Order of the Golden Rose. I have friends with me,” the pale blonde responded just loud enough that her voice could penetrate the door. “We wish you no harm, Yoshua.”

“H-h-h-how do you know my name?!”

“I am a seer. We investigated who opened the portals and it led us to you.” Lorelei paused for a moment. “We only wish to talk, to help you understand the world you have now entered. If you are ready to let us in… please, open the door.”

A minute passed. Two minutes passed. Three minutes passed. They waited there in silence, not willing to make any sounds that might spook the portal-maker. Had it not been for Lorelei’s ability to peer past the wall, John would have gotten nervous.

Finally, there was a shifting sound behind the door. Steps grew louder as they approached the door. The handle was lowered. The wooden barrier swung, then stopped. The squeaking of the hinges had Yoshua stop for a second. He gulped, then ripped the door the rest of the way open, stumbling back as he did.

Yoshua was a man with shaggy, greasy brown hair that went to his chin and an unfortunately incomplete beard that had grown out in a messy bush. He was not truly ugly, but on the less attractive side of things, though that had a lot to do with his current state. He was pale from cold and exhaustion, his eyes had deep bags under them, highlighting their unusually intense green colour. His dark clothes hung from him like an esoteric robe, the fabric torn from his wild escape and hanging from a diminished body. John estimated that he had weighed several kilos more before these two weeks.

‘Jesus Christ,’ the Gamer thought, staring at that level. ‘That’s even higher than Macuil’s was.’

Lorelei smiled sweetly and bowed her head. “Thank you for your trust,” she said. “May I enter?”

“Y-you may… but he can’t!” Yoshua pointed directly at John. “He is up to something! I can feel it!”

The words were panicked and true all the same. Rare was it that John looked at someone who had both better mental faculties than him and a deeper-seated paranoia. Yoshua must have been rationalizing his anxiety at the speed of sound. Was he thinking about the Gamer killing him? Because the thought had crossed his mind now.

Level 2000. Title: Realmbreaker, now confirmed by Gaia. Over 10000 Spellpower.

All of that attached to a man who couldn’t even point a finger without whimpering.

John failed to mask the darker impulses of his contemplation. “I’ll be with the others,” he said and stepped away. Perhaps it would have been for the best to kill him. He was so slow and fragile that John could have executed him quicker than he would have felt it. ‘But I am not that monstrous,’ he thought. It was not a proud one. ‘We’ll see if that is a mistake.’

He glanced back over his shoulder. Lorelei, Lee and Nahoa entered the house. The door was left open. There was no heat to escape anyhow. The emergency shelter came with a fireplace, but Yoshua had never lit it. He might have died of hypothermia had they not found him.

“The landscape changed,” John remarked, when he rejoined the combatants.

They followed his gaze to the portal. What had been a green plain minutes earlier now was covered in odd, bright green spikes.

“Other worlds, other rules,” Nia commented.

“You would fucking know, creepy, two-bounded, blonde bitch,” Eliana cussed, arm’s crossed.

“Thank you for your confidence.”

“…You know, whenever you do that, it fucking gets me out of my rhythm.”

“Does it?”

“Are you being socially awkward or a tease? I can never fucking tell with you!”

Nia gave it the customary three seconds before responding. “Yes.”

“Get fucked, you blank ass slut!”

John continued to study the alien land for a little bit longer, before addressing everyone else. “He’s level 2000, 8 times Stat Scaling.”

That immediately shut everyone up. Nathalia was the first to recover. “You mean to tell me the entity in that house is above Romulus?”

“On pure Level, he’s close to two Romuluses. He’s fragile though so… Level is ultimately just a representation of Stats. It might just be that’s the degree of Stats needed for what he is doing.” The Gamer sighed heavily, his eyes lingering on the ground for a couple of blinks. “What a mess… Not quite sure what to do with all of that yet.”

Raising his eyes, John saw that the landscape had changed yet again. The spikes had frayed, broken up into ethereal towers like frozen flames of phosphorescent green. Streaks of black stood in-between.

“We might have an issue on our hands in a moment,” the Gamer warned everyone.

All turned to inspect the portal. Nathalia, Eliana, Nia, John and Moira all stared into the portal. Nothing changed while they observed the unknown land. Nothing could be made out with certainty either. It was all blurry, the details fuzzy even to their eyes.

“Nia, does your sight reveal anything hidden to us?” the Warden asked.

“All is filtered through the barrier that is the portal,” the blonde answered, the black of the void forming like a visor before her eyes. “I can only see the swirls of his magic.”

“Anything you can see?” John extended the question to Devos. The Mite King only paid half attention to the portal. He had been lost in thought this entire time, quietly pondering whatever was occupying his mind.

“My sight is like yours, even if my eyes work differently,” the humanoid insect answered, voice slow and quiet.

“You can go back in the house if the sight is too much for you.” The promise came from Lee. “I know the feeling, no shame and all that.”

John reluctantly removed his gaze from the portal and turned to the house again. Lee and Lorelei were coaxing Yoshua one step at a time towards the threshold. He stepped past it, shoulders quivering, knees buckling, but walking all the same. The tattered strips of his clothes swayed like tendrils in a mild ocean current.

Yoshua winced when he saw Devos. He took half a step back and gulped. He was frozen in fear, but he did not run. A remarkable display of willpower, John found.

Lorelei and Lee were softly talking to the man.

John glanced back at the portal and froze up. “There they are,” he spoke, ghostly.

From out between the frozen flames, dozens of the creatures had emerged. Goat-legged apparitions of dark flesh, each with its own number of additional limbs. 3, 6, 12, one even had thirty thin, boneless, hooved tendrils emerging from its bent back. Their white masks had small gaps in them. Thin flickers of golden light emerged from them, dancing around the world before them like lashing, electric tongues. They were all that moved while they were being observed. The world on the other side of the portal was a photograph of hell. Night had fallen over the warped plains.

“Tzitzimimeh?” John muttered to himself.

Between the anxious Realmbreaker and the creatures whose origin he was only guessing stood another alien. One who spoke in a grim, tired tone, “John, I have to ask a question.”

“Can it wait?” The Gamer gripped the shaft of Inkaryl, the weapon conjured to his side.

“W-w-what’s happening?!” Yoshua stammered.

“What is the obligation of a king?” The Mite King shook his head. “No, that is too small a question for this. Suppose, Emperor of Fusion, that you were the only one of your kind capable of delivering to your people a prosperity they couldn’t even conceive of before. You, alone, have the chance to usher in a utopia of such abundance that any need to migrate, any uncertainty about your species’ continued existence, will be wiped away for thousands of years. If you knew all of this with undeniable certainty… how far would you be willing to go to make that future real?”

John clenched his jaw. All of time seemed to slow to a crawl while he tried to give any answer besides the one in his heart. His pulse raced. The Realmbreaker hyperventilated. Devos’ mandibles grinded sorrowfully. The women around them held their breath.

There was no denying what had to happen next.

“I would stop at nothing,” said one monarch to another. “May I have a question in return?”

Devos held his position, lowered into a crouch, ready to leap. “…Speak it.”

“What gives you that certainty?”

“…I must refuse that answer.”

“I see… LEE, GET THEM OUT OF HERE!”

Just as John screamed, Devos sprung into action.