Ugly Bastard

Noah walked out of the shadows deep in the shed and stopped at the door, glancing at the dog that lay pretending to be asleep. Feeling his gaze, the dog opened its eye, glancing back at him.

“What?” The dog asked

“I have questions.” Said Noah.

“I am not obliged to answer them.” The dog said.

“You said you are guarding the “part” of you, so that Yuko there for example could not consume it. But can you do it if I willingly give it up to her?” Asked Noah

The dog’s eyes went open all at once.

“Yeah. Mull it over.” Said Noah, turning away from the dog and glancing at Ugy and Yuko.

“User before you make any rushed decisio….” Started to say Ugy but his voice disappeared in the middle of the scene as a cone sign with a line crossing it appeared above his head.

“Shut up. I am not interested in hearing bullshit.” Said Noah, his eyes watching Yuko, who felt his dark mood and squinted her eyes.

“Yuko, you said you never managed to get inside this shed, so how do you know what’s inside?” Asked Noah.

“No! That’s not how it goes. I told you all about it and brought you here, first you answer MY question! What’s inside? What did this little fucker do there?” Asked Yuko with an angry voice, stepping on Ugy’s plush body so hard the plush bear's back was bent backwards almost ninety degrees.

“A woman he was probably making go crazy behind my back, forcing her to serve him rather than me, binding her into being his own personal slave that would turn even on me if he needed to.” Said Noah.

Ugy struggled under Yuko’s feet, shaking his head from side to side and trying to say something but he could not utter a single word which frustrated him immensely.

“This is all your fault! Because you are being lenient with him. Letting him get away with the bullshit he does. Starting from that fucking tree prasite. Now a sidehoe.” Said Yuko, grinding her teeth.

“There is not much I can do and you know it. Now answer my question. How do you know of the basement?”

Yuko opened her mouth then closed it again, a thoughtful expression appearing on her face. Noah did not like it. Everyone here was trying to keep secrets from him. Do stuff behind his back.

“I will ask it once and for a final time. Who told you about the basement?”

Yuko’s eyes went wide as she heard Noah rephrase his question. The dog's ears perked up as it was also surprised by this question. If there was someone who told her, then how did that person know? He was sure he did not let anyone pass him.

“It.. It was…” muttered Yuko with hesitation.

“Butterfly. Was it?” Said Noah, looking carefully at the change in her expressions. Now that he saw how her expression changed when he asked “Who told her” instead of “how did she know”, Noah was sure there was another person here he still did not know of.

“Yes.” Said Yuko. “She told me.”

“Who is she?” Asked Noah. “No, what nightmare is she?”

“Tokko. She is that wicked fairy from the mirror that fulfills the perverted wishes of the people in the story "Recreation of Tokko.” Said Yuko.

“I see. That’s what I thought when I saw that butterfly in the basement. She’s the first one who came to mind.” Said Noah

“In the basement?” Asked the dog jumping up on its feet. “This is impossible.”

“What? Not so calm anymore? So there is a way to slip by you.” Said Noah with a smirk.

“No way! I don’t believe it!” The dog said.

“Whatever. Believe what you want.” Said Noah with a dismissing tone, turning away from it, gazing outside the shed.

“Come out. I know you are there.” Said Noah.

A moment later, a small butterfly appeared from the sky and landed on Yuko’s shoulder. The dog squinted its eyes at it and something akin to a thoughtful expression appeared on its mug

“How did you get out of the seal?” Asked Noah, but the answer did not follow, silence spreading around the place.

“She can’t speak directly.” Said Yuko.

“But she spoke to you.” Said Noah.

“There is a way to have a conversation with her but not here. She is a mirror world spirit so she can be heard through your reflection.” Said Yuko.

“I see.” Then I can just make a mirror here

“I suggest you not.” The dog said suddenly with a worry. Its voice.

“I agree with the dog. It is not advisable to create mirrors here in this world carelessly. Inside the house is not a problem but anywhere outside is…”

“What?” Asked Noah. “Why?”

“Safety concern.” The dog said.

Noah glanced at the dog, at Yuko and then at Ugy who although very displeased with the situation stopped struggling under Yuko’s feet and nodded actively showing his agreement with the two nightmares.

“Alright. We will discuss the reason for that later. Right now I want to know how she got out.” Said Noah.

“She didn’t.” Said Yuko, making Noah raise his eyebrow. “She is still sealed under the mountain just where you left her.”

“Ah. I see.” The dog said, and as if in a relief it lay back down on the floor, closing its eyes as if not concerned by its power to slip by him anymore. “It's just a pesky bug. No wonder.” The dog grumbled.

“What do you mean by that?” Asked Noah after glancing at the dog's reaction.

“She is a spirit creature. Or well, she was meant to be in the story. So the control she has over her powers is far exceeding that of any other nightmare. Even that dog over there.” Said Yuko pointing with her chin at the dog. “But unlike him, even just a small speck of herself is enough for her to use as an avatar, unlike this dog who needs quite a big chunk of himself to do it. That’s why she can use it as a way to peek outside. She isn’t really out.”

“I still don’t get it.” Said Noah. “She uses part of herself to peek outside. But how did her part get outside if I sealed her and forbade Ugy to release anyone?”

“Ah, I see the misconception. No wonder you don’t get it. That system of yours didn’t explain things properly.” The dog said with a yawn and went silent without any intentions to continue.

“You want me to feed you to other nightmares so much huh?” Asked Noah.

“Tsk.” The dog voiced. “Don’t you know where your system gets its codes to create your skills and abilities?” It asked.

“From the stories I watched…” Answered Noah with a strange suspicion creeping down his back.

“Yes. And many of your skills come from nightmares. The powers to hear someone call you and travel through dreams, partly come from that butterfly you named Tokko. So borrowing these powers you consumed parts of those nightmares. Release them into your mind's realm. They are now assimilated within you. But the less they are modified the bigger the chance for such creatures like her to take it back or take a hold of it to use as an avatar.” The dog explained

“So there are more nightmare pieces floating around here that I don’t know of?” Asked Noah.

“For nightmares less adept at control over their pieces, this is not possible. Only someone very skilled like a spirit creature may do something like that. That’s why your system must have overlooked that possibility letting her do this. But the piece she controls is so small it is harmless. Peeking around and being nosy is the most she can do.” The dog said with a yawn. “Just a pesky bug.”

“But you are different. Why can you control your piece?”

“For something basic like skill, your system needs just a bit of reference. Small part. Not enough to be able to threaten you or be manipulated by a us nightmare. But the more of these pieces you release into your mind realm, the bigger the influence over it we get.”

“So you got a lot of pieces? But I remember you said that you have two.” Asked Noah, but the dog did not answer, just laying silent as if did not hear him.

“He meant something else. To do something like bringing an avatar while being somewhere outside of your mind, you need a whole magnitude more pieces. Enough to be considered as a piece of…” Said Yuko going silent at the end as if hesitating whether she should finish her answer.

“Part of what?” Asked Noah.

“Part of us…” said Yuko quietly

“Tsk, girl. You should not blabber what you don’t wish to expose from the get go.” The dog said with disapproval.

Noah gaze thoughtfully at the two nightmares for a few seconds before asking his next question.

“What are you?” Noticing Yuko averting her eyes, which made him realize this was the right question he needed to ask.

“You all are sentient, have your will, knowledge and characters. You don’t seem as just some figment of imagination, written by someone. You don’t seem as just characters of a story awakened in my mind like some story characters. What are you? What are all these nightmares that now reside in my mind realm?”

Yuko opened her mouth but the dog interrupted her.

“You sure you want to answer his question?” The dog asked.

Yuko glanced at Noah whose gaze chilled as he glanced between them

“Yes. We agreed on trust. And I believe I need to answer that to keep the trust between us” Said Yuko nodding at Noah, seeing his gaze at her lighten.

“Have you ever heard of the word egregor, Noah?” Yuko asked.

“No. That’s my first time hearing this word.” Said Noah. “What is it?”

“In short it is a concept of something that gains power the more you believe in it. The more it worshiped. The more recognition it gets.”

“Huh? Like the artifacts and deities of the cultivation stories?” Asked Noah. He saw something similar in those stories. People sent some kind of worship power into objects and it became stronger, the more people were bound to it.

“It is similar.” Said Yuko. “But less material. It is something akin to a thought. An idea. Figment of imagination. A myth. Only when more and more people know it, believe in it, does it gain more weight. The more recognition it gets, the more powerful it grows. It can be anything: a simple belief that fire can be cold or that water touched by your favorite idol girl can have healing properties, for example, or that bread would always fall butter down. Just that the more people sincerely believe it over time, the more realistic it becomes. As if it literally gains weight, becoming laws and truths of the world without them knowing it.”

“So that’s what you are? Myths created by humans long long ago? Asked Noah.

“Not exactly. We are similar. Just like egregors, we are concepts that gain power from the worship of a kind. But the difference is that we are more powerful the more we are feared. And although we start as mere imagination, we are not created by human minds.” Said Yuko.

“What do you mean? If you are just imagination then how can you not be a human creation?” Noah asked, confused.

“You know the big philosophical question? What came first, the egg or the chicken? The same with us, I guess. What came first, we, or the fear of us?” The dog said.

“I don’t get it. You say that humans imagined it because it existed? Not the other way around?” Noah said with confusion.

“In a sense, yes.” Said Yuko. “We, nightmares aren’t just some fictional characters, we are parts of bigger, more powerful concepts that were born outside of this or any other world. These concepts existed long before this world was even born. Although in every world we have different specs and shapes, and differ in power and abilities, we originate from one and the same concept.

“Like the concept of a woman with a lower body of a spider and the upper body of a human.” The dog said.

“Or the immortal bloodsucking power that spread through bites as rabbies.” Said Yuko gazing at the dog that grinned at her, showing his sharp teeth.

“So, although we exist in the shape humans of that world imagined us, the reason they could imagine us in the first place is because we already existed. You could say that they did not imagine us, but simply brought us into their world. Let us in. But when we get enough recognition, we will bring in the original concept, showing humans the true fear and terror that we were made to be.”

“Original concept.” Repeated Noah, mulling the words. “So that’s what you meant when you compared her to yourself. Two pieces of the original concept. Not just some pieces of the code from the story.”

“Indeed. With one piece we nightmare are mere beings of the story. All we are worth is what we were imagined as in that story. But it…” Said Yuko, glancing at the dog.

“It has other pieces, from other stories. Other worlds. You could say it is more full, more powerful, more knowledgeable now. More ancient. It is now a grade above any other nightmare here.”

“I see.” Said Noah gazing at Ugy hatefully.

“So tell me, if it's not the humans then who really created you?” Asked Noah.

“Who creates monsters? Dungeons?” Asked the dog, opening its eye to glance at Noah.

“Dark God.” Muttered Noah, remembering the story of monster creation he heard from Zinnia just recently. The pattern in the chaos that he made to give birth to unnatural beings full of malice and madness.

“In our core, we, nightmares, are the same thing as monsters bursting out of dungeons and hunting humans in your real world.” The dog said. “Just a less pathogenic version of it.”

“Patho…what does it mean?”

“It is a word meaning less harmful or less virulent disease than its original version.” Said Yuko.

“Why a comparison to a disease suddenly?” Said Noah.

“Why do you think we exist in the first place?” The dog said. “We are in a sense a disease. Disease that plagues the worlds itself instead of just certain beings or creatures.”

Noah looked at it with open mouth, before turning to Yuko as if searching for a confirmation from her.

“That’s right. We are a weapon of Dark God to corrupt and pollute the worlds. We seep into the world, gradually taking place in the minds of its creatures, gaining power from recognition and belief just like egregors. A mere myths or stories at the beginning, until we gain so much power we become an undivided part of that world. Become its truth. We gain power to be real, be material. Finally we can get born in different forms becoming monsters of that world.

At that time, the world is so polluted with malignant spirit magic that Dark God can start planting the seeds of dungeons, bringing monsters in that world in mass. And so the gradual fall of the world begins. You could compare this to the terminal stage of a disease where sickness is spread so wide and massively in the body of its carrier, that barely anyone could overcome it.”

“Then, what does it mean that you are less patho-whatever. Less virulent. Why is that?” Asked Noah.

“Well the creators and rulers of those worlds, Gods, are not useless or stupid. They have certain methods to fight the disease. For example, turn these malignant and fear-inducing concepts into less harmful ones. Turn them less fearful in the mind of people living in their world. Less worshipworthy. Like the world on the other side of that comment screen. The world you found us in. A world where concepts of pure malice and madness gradually became stories of comedies, romance, happy stories and even porn. That is one of the worlds that has resisted the illness the best and will continue to prosper for many years to come. ” Yuko explained.

“The world you live in, on the other hand, is an example of the world where God has failed to contain the disease and let it spread to the highest degree, now struggling on its last leg. A world bound to die out quite soon. No matter how much you people struggle, at this stage of contamination, your world is doomed. It's just a matter of time.” The dog said with a yawn once again. “Well it’s not that your God was incompetent. It's just that his time has come. Any world would reach that stage at some point.”

“This…this disease. How long has this been going on?” Asked Noah.

“If you mean in general? The concepts that lay at the root of all the monsters exist for billions and billions of years. It consumed countless worlds and yet many more worlds have been born in this time. In a sense it is now a part of the world's life cycle. All worlds face this fate at some point. Some quicker. Some slower. But sooner or later, they will be incapable of containing the spread of disease any longer and get to the same stage as your world.” Said Yuko.

“No, I mean if we take the world I live in particular? How long has the disease been spreading?”

“Hard to say. Sometimes it takes hundreds of thousands of years. Millions even in some cases. It all depends on how drastic a measure a God ruling the world is ready to take.” Said Yuko.

“What do you mean?” Asked Noah.

“Well, making us less fearsome, by spreading funny or romantic stories can only delay it so much. There are more efficient methods as well. Such as the mass extinction of a civilization that is too polluted. Great flood, large meteorite, super volcano eruption, ice-age. Anything goes.” The dog said.

“That would delay the spread for some time. But then the uncivilized and dark ages are the best times for fear to spread once more. And the harm they bring to themselves is no small. So these methods also only work for a few times. For a Dark God, this is just a minute delay. After all, time means nothing to a God. He has all the time in existence to patiently wear any world out before consuming them. “

“Then this world… how long does it have?” Asked Noah.

“A year? A century? No one can say. It depends on how well you humans can struggle. What we can be sure of is that this world's God is out of methods to do anything anymore. If he could, he would not let it spread to this degree. You could compare this world to a body covered with gangrenous, stinky, leprosy boils full of puss. How long does a patient like that have? What strength does he have left within him? It all depends on people living in this world. On how long they can withstand the invasion.” The dog said.

“Is that so?” Noah asked, lifting the muting order from Ugy.

“Yes.” Ugy answered with a muffled voice, his face plunged into the ground.

“You knew it this entire time?” Asked Noah.

“Not the entire time. I was a blank system when you awakened me, remember? But with access to the great library, I’ve figured out a few things since.” Ugy said.

“What about this world?” Said Noah swiping his hand around. “What about my mind realm?”

“It is a small closed off world. The influence is similar.” Said Ugy.

“Knowing all that, you still brought all these nightmares and even spread pieces of them around to give me part of their power, while risking to corrupt and pollute the mind? You do realise that their end goal is our demise?”

“Didn’t you listen properly, user? It is an inevitable end to every world. So if it is inevitable, why wait for it to spread silently and unknowingly? Why not take things into your hands from the get go and find a way to subdue and subjugate these powers?”

“Are you mad?” Asked Noah.

“On the contrary. Isn’t this how all the cures in the world function? You take a weaker version of a disease or poison and use this less virulent version to make anti-bodies, anti-venom, develop resilience or tolerance.” Said Ugy.

“I am not a God. Even this world, it is not mine. I was merely given the right to use it.” Said Noah.

“For now. But think about it carefully, User. The power that we were given allows us to consume and digest so to say. Take something that isn’t of our creation and make something else. This world and the world you live in, the things we take from them, we are able to reconstruct and make it ours. Doesn’t that mean, that at the very epitome of that power, we are given a power to consume these sick worlds, and create new ones from the pieces we digest. We were given the power to become a God, user. Giving us this power, isn’t this the real task the God has bestowed upon us?”

Now all three, including Yuko and the dog, stood with their mouths agap, gazing at Ugy with shock.

“This motherfucker is more crazy than we nightmares, are. And we were born mad from the get go.” The dog said with a merry laugh.

“Wh…what..what do you mean power to consume and digest?” Asked Noah. “Since when…”

“Think it carefully, user. The skill, the abilities I make. I take pieces of different concepts and modify them, rearrange them. Make them our original version. But what in this world is not a concept at its core? Magic, artifacts, and living beings such as spirits, monsters and these nightmares, other systems, even people beliefs or egregors as Yuko called them. At their core they are all just concepts. A code, a conglomeration of information. Information that can be assimilated. Eve the God…”

“H…how… how the fuck did you come from recycling skills to consuming the whole world logic?” Asked Noah aghast, interrupting him.

“This is quite logical conjecture….” Started to explain Ugy.

“Shut the fuck up! This was a rhetoric question, bastard. I am not destroying the whole world simply on your conjecture that we were given power to do it thus that’s what we should do.” Said Noah making Ugy mute once again. “Fucking hell. Just as you think you can’t be crazyer, you instantly outdo yourself.”

“Noah, do you really believe he would listen to you and stop?” Asked Yuko. “Do you think he wouldn’t continue his plan behind your back just as he did time and again?”

Noah looked at her with squinted eyes.

“And what about that woman in the basement? You think he will stop his attempts with her?”

Noah already thought on this. His answer was to ban Ugy from doing it. But would this really stop him? Would he not find some loophole as he always does?

“You have something in mind. What do you suggest?” Asked Noah.

Yuko smiled wickedly.

“Why don’t we make a deal…”