Keron
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Chapter 40 - The Zoomies
🕑 Added 2025-04-03 16:11:33 +0000 UTC{Overhearing your confident bluster of hunting The Great Old One, the old man slumped over the counter beside your group suddenly gasps for breath, sitting bolt upright and staring through you with a haunted gaze devoid of life.
He whispers: ‘I have looked upon all the universe has to hold of horror, and even the skies of spring and flowers of summer must ever afterward be poison to me. The monster you seek should not be touched upon by mortal minds, else you beg the torment suffered in my every waking moment.’}
*Conspiratorial chittering*
{I cast fireball!}
{NOT AGAIN!}
--The first and final episode of Season 2 of Insignificant Roll, the Dungeons & Raccoons show, P.A.W: channel #12.
The freaky Lovecraftian plant doesn’t give Cyon time to answer my questions about its flavour. One of its torsos propels itself towards me with its tentacle-like limbs, while the other two spread out, moving to surround me.
I duck, narrowly avoiding the charge and swiping my claws across the squid’s mouthless face. A couple of its long tentacles lash out, catching me as the body passes over and drawing deep lines across my chest despite Sim hardening to defend me.
“Ouch,” I mutter, though the grin on my face speaks contrary to my complaint.
That is a Model Thirteen, an advanced model designed for hive defence. They exchange longevity for power and can’t maintain life for long after activation.
“That’s great and all,” I say, sidestepping near super-sonic tentacle whipping past with a glistening blade on the tip. “But I don’t think I’m outlasting this thing. Give me something to make me go faster.”
Torsos two and three lash out from my sides, one of them managing to catch me with a blunt whip and give me a broken rib through Sim.
‘And heal.’
¯¯¯¯¯
New Purchases!
Class II Prolotor Drugs – 425 points, 1 token
Class II Zoomies Combat Stim – 15 points
Class II Re: Gen X – 35 points
Total: 475, 1 token
Remaining Points: #####
_____
Two syringes spawn in the small of my back, and I can feel Sim reach out to catch them before turning their points on my spine.
A cool stream spreads up my back, washing over my stinging wounds and knitting my flesh back together.
Time seems to grind to a halt as a pointy tentacle flies towards my face. I stare at it with wide eyes and go to move my head out of the way, finding it feels like pushing through thick syrup as I try to dodge.
I tilt my head, open my mouth, and latch onto the tentacle, rooting it in place.
The squid to my rear left tries to pull its limb back, but my razor-sharp teeth cut through its flesh with thrilling ease, severing the blade from the arm. The salty tang of calamari hits my tongue as I chew, but another blunt whip slams into my right thigh as I dodge three others, momentarily making the limb go numb.
This fish just dead-legged me… now it’s personal!
I send a warning chirp through my D.E.N, making sure my siblings won’t interfere with my brawl, before I fling myself towards the body with a festering gash down the centre.
Arcing limbs slash through me despite the fact that I should be invisible, but my mind moves fast enough for me to read each one, batting aside those aiming for vital areas and only letting through a few shallow welts and gashes. Even as a few larger chunks of flesh are torn from my ribs, arms, and legs, they’re quickly covered by Sim and stitched together by my unnaturally accelerated healing.
I’m upon the flailing squid before it has time to pull itself to one of its other bodies, and my arms blur in a flash of violence. My claws rake deep troughs through the plant’s tough green flesh, and the thick bacterium pouring from the tips rapidly dig deeper into their new target.
Two blunt tentacles from the other bodies finally hit me in sync, slamming into my chest and sending me tumbling back off their companion… Brethren? Themselves?
Either way, its far too late for that one. Its ravaged body falls in on itself as the other two pull on their connected tentacles trying to move it, and I can even see the discoloured rot of my bacteria slowly spreading to the tentacles to try to infect them.
Not trying to give them a chance to recover, I scramble to my feet and dash towards one of the two remaining invertebrates, but it quickly avoids me by yanking on its limbs still linked to the other. I spin on my heels to follow, parrying two more bladed tentacles and watching in fascination as the squids cut off the limbs once connected to the rotting corpse of their third, prematurely ending my bacteria’s spread.
“Pretty smart for a plant!” I giggle, grabbing hold of one of the limbs attacking me and pulling on it, lifting myself off my feet and sending myself careening through the air towards the Xeno.
I hit a tangle of tentacled limbs, but I bet the plant stops feeling smug when I bat it with my tail, coating the limbs in a thick layer of sizzling enzymes. The Thirteen silently writhes in panic as its skin dissolves, making it easy for me to systematically remove limbs from the clumped-up wall of flesh meant to protect the vulnerable torsos behind.
Within only a few minutes of the Lovecraftian horror arriving in the tunnel, my arms are buried down to the elbow in its last two torsos, making sure the Great Old One will never rise again.
So, you read Lovecraft?
Cyon’s judgemental tone rings in my head as small motes of black light gather in the air before me, condensing into her small void-like avatar.
“I…”
I definitely shouldn’t tell her I only know Lovecraft from comic books that reference him…
“Why did you spend my emergency token when I asked for something to make me faster?”
Cyon narrows her pitch-black eyes but relents when a Three leaps through her to attack me, reminding us of the rest of the plants trying to push their way through Spot’s wall of fire.
Thanks to the modifications your body has been through, Class I drugs wouldn’t have had a strong enough immediate effect to achieve what you were looking for. Speaking of, your Class II Re: Gen X has a few minutes left, your Zoomies will run out in another thirty seconds, so you may want to make the most of it.
Nodding, I take a quick bite of the squid for the road before pushing myself off its corpse and joining my siblings in culling the rest of our guests.
It takes a little while for the buggers to stop coming, but soon the embers of Spot’s flaming wall burn out and we’re only left to deal with the last stragglers who seem annoyingly resistant to my DogEater.
“Why aren’t they melting?” I pout at Cyon, spinning another Four’s head on its shoulders until it pops off.
It would appear the hive has acquired a sample of your current generation of DogEater and developed a resistance to it. I would advise purchasing a different strain, maybe the K3 variant, and switching to that from now on.
I reach out to pet the invisible raccoon rubbing her head against my shin as I nod in agreement.
“Oh, and it’s probably about time I started making some WhiteDream to clean up, too.”
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New Purchases!
DogEater K3 (blueprint) – 200 points
WhiteDream S0 (blueprint) – 200 points
Total: 400
Remaining Points: #####
_____
The new options appear in my R.A.B.I.E.S’ menu in my augs, so I set it to produce both before turning my attention to the dull ache in my stomach.
“I’m somehow hungry again!”
That’s to be expected. The combat stimulants you used for speed and regeneration accelerated your already excessive nutrient consumption rate.
A swirling black vortex bubbles into existence before me, drawing Chip and Spot’s attention as they scramble over waste and corpses to approach me for their after-battle head pats. I reach into the illusory portal that Cyon is somehow showing to my siblings, probably through their augs like with me, and pull out a vacuum sealed packet of strange, wrinkly orange chunks.
I rip open the packaging to a tropical scent, and toss one of the satisfyingly chewy chunks of fruit into my mouth.
“Nom nom nom. What is this?” I ask with a full mouth, handing out pieces of the gummy gold to my curious siblings.
Dried mango.
I nod in approval, making quick work of the bag before reaching out my hands in a silent request for another.
How about this?
Cyon says as her avatar crawls from the portal that drops my second packet of mango snacks, pointing down the pipe to remind me to get moving again.
Designate a pocket on your trousers, and whenever you reach into it, I’ll give you random nutrient packed snacks to keep you going.
“Yes please!” I beam, my eyes practically glowing at the idea of an endlessly refilling snack pocket.
I’m pretty sure I catch Chip glancing greedily at my pockets too, momentarily breathing doubts about the privacy of my conversations with Cyon into my head, but she keeps going, distracting me successfully.
I’ll work out the most point efficient purchases to make sure it doesn’t affect your normal shopping too much, but you can set a spending cap on it too if you want.
“As long as it doesn’t eat into my medical emergencies limit, I don’t mind,” I reassure her with a shake of my head, fixing her avatar with a serious gaze as my tail swishes behind me to scatter WhiteDream on the corpses, not from excitement… “No amount of spending is too much for good snacks.”
