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The Gamer Chapter 1692 – Chase for the Cure Finale – Nahua-xoco-atl-xolotl
🕑 Added 2024-06-04 07:10:41 +0000 UTC
“Let me lead,” Aclysia requested and John nodded.
The dragon maid jumped into the amniotic fluid that had been left in the sack that Xipe-Totec had been sealed in. The vile soup turned solid around her ankles. Raising Tiemarath, she prepared herself to break the damaged seal. Fake their keys may have been, but the Flayer Lord had not restored the seal as he probably had intended after being set free.
One plunge of the weapon cut through the sack and the stone underneath. A thick miasma immediately spilled forth. The purple was so dense it turned into an impenetrable fog. John’s MP regeneration was put to a standstill just being near it. He took three more steps back, until his mana reclaimed an upwards trajectory. ‘Fortunately, the way up is thirteen layers of sealed corridors,’ John thought.
Aclysia kept widening the gap until she could jump through. John sent the Companion Cube with her as a light source.
The chamber was tiny compared to the one above it. In fact, the cylindrical room was only as wide as the seal above it. Thousands of offerings had been poured into the room. There was enough gold, silver, and gemstones, all shaped up by artisans of a time long gone, to make even an Abyssal rich. The only prize John cared for lay on top of the altar in the middle of it all.
The shape of the altar suggested that there once had been cushions. They, like the clothing that probably had once covered the person lying on top of the altar, had been eaten away by the disease. The Giant’s Puss kept rising in thick fumes from her body. The origin point kept on travelling up and down her limbs, in tandem with the steady regeneration that occurred underneath.
Decorations of metal wire and stones remained wrapped around her upper arms and neck. Complex tapestries created by polished pebbles and gemstones. The width of both items showed just how much thinner she was than she was supposed to be.
That she was supposed to be female was clear only by the structure of her bones and the lack of anything shrivelled between her legs. Her skin was stretched over bones that themselves seemed to have partially rotted away. There were no ears. Her white hair was spotty. Her nose was a degenerated stump. Her lips had peeled back and revealed a mouth with no teeth. Even her tongue had rotted away.
Yet, she was whole and alive. All of her limbs were there, when the hands were typically the first that went when the Giant’s Puss infected someone. Her chest rose and fell in slow and controlled breaths. Her regeneration was outpacing the disease by enough to keep her alive, perhaps even to slowly purge it.
Eyelids quivered and opened, revealing light green eyes. They were entirely human and glowed like emeralds under a limelight. She looked at Aclysia with a degree of disbelief and worry. Through her, John spoke in Nahuatl, “My Master requires your services. The Giant’s Puss has returned and you are the only cure we have found. We have ways to restore you. If you are willing to help, nod.”
She did not have the necessary facial features left to show an expression. Aclysia had to bow down closely to even have a chance to catch whatever miniscule motion she may still be capable of. A tiny, miniscule nod followed.
Aclysia picked her up and jumped back up through the hole. Immediately, John’s Particle Skin flared up again. The constant silver flashes created a sound eerily alike to a maxed out Geiger counter.
A true monster of Endurance, as was predicted.
John dismissed the new Class window for the moment and remained where he was. The disease radiation coming from the demigoddess stopped when Undine enveloped her with her slime. A green tinge to the deep blue of the goth slime announced her attempt to heal the woman now within her. Suddenly, a cavity grew within the slime. A large cloud of purple stretched her.
Undine had to release the miasma. Nahua remained within. The debuff had decreased at the lowest visible level, but the disease had taken its pound of flesh in the process. Running a series of quick calculations, the Gamer came to the conclusions that, even in the most optimistic, exponential progression towards healing he could realistically conceive, they would require two weeks’ worth of his mana and would create enough of the disease in the process to fill the entire barrier up.
‘What an abominable thing to exist,’ the Gamer thought and went for the only solution still available. He approached, knowing his mana would protect him for long enough to get an answer to the next question.
‘You sure we should use that?’ Claire asked. ‘We know nothing about her.’
‘I’m not going to wait until Lee’s fingers rot off,’ John answered simply and reached into his inventory to pull out what his double back in the Guild Hall had just deposited there. It was a disk of swirling elemental metals. A handle attached to the upside of the rim curved towards the centre, where its end hovered. Singular, a sharp needle extended upwards, to penetrate the palm of whoever gripped the handle.
Nahua was carefully lowered into John’s lap. He placed the Sylkarion on her lower abdomen and moved her hand to it. He stopped just short of driving the needle into her flesh.
“The simple healing isn’t going to work, but I have alternative means,” John told her. “It will cost you your flesh and you will find yourself connected to my mind for a time being, but you’ll be no thrall or puppet. In time, I will be able to release you from those bonds. I will give you an immortal body of metal and magic and power.” He stared into those human, green eyes. “All I ask in return is that you save those I care about.”
A shiver of strength went through the woman as she gripped the handle. The vital green of life rose from her skin, then was siphoned into the Sylkarion. The swiftness of her decision surprised John, but this was the kind of surprise he could currently use.
The body in his lap was eaten away completely by the disease dwelling within the moment the empowering soul was removed. Not even bones were left behind, just decorations that John picked up and placed in his inventory for the moment. If they meant anything to her, she would have them back soon enough.
The Sylkarion burst just as the last one had. The handle separated from the bottom disk, cutting through the purple dust that had been Nahua’s hand. Separated into six equally sized pieces of the Celexiums, the bottom burst as well. He caught Nahua’s condensed soul before it could fall to the ground.
It was about the size of a golf ball. No matter what angle he viewed it from, the outer layer always appeared purple, surrounding colourful layers of green, white and brown. Inside, a will stirred, but failed to make contact with him. He could hear half-whispered words of Nahuatl, the dialect expectedly much older than what John had learned. It was fortunate he had gone for the one that was supposed to be closest to what these people had spoken.
It was on John to send the suggestion for the contract. A pure emotion made request, confirmed and sent back to manifest as a window before him.
Confirmation was had and the expected window followed.
John left that open for the time being. What he needed to sort out first was her lack of a body and communication capacity. Even now that they were linked on a soul level, communication felt fuzzy. He was sending a strong signal, but she wasn’t getting how to receive or answer yet. She would learn quickly, but it would be even quicker just to give her a mouth.
As he prepared the typical opening meal of progressively hard metals, he received an intent from her. A minorly irked idea that he should be there as she shaped herself up. John had no idea what cultural customs were in place, but he had no problem obliging. A box of stone was swiftly erected, isolated from the outside world by a curtain that he got from the Guild Hall. The box was majorly out of place in this space, but so was John in his suit and he really had more important issues than aesthetics.
While Nahua was getting herself a body, using some mental guidance from Claire in that process, John opened up the reward he got from the Quest. A new Class sounded interesting enough.
John didn’t anticipate he would ever use any of those three Classes, but Death Knight at least had a potential to be useful to him. Courtesy of Inkaryl, he did always have access to the Life Soul Type, so there was something to be done there. Plus, it had the greatest edgy factor of the three.
One press of the button, and the decision was made.
Then it was time to wait. John kept a close but distant look at Nahua’s mental profile. He did not want her to be uncomfortable. Despite the situation, he did want to be a gentleman about this. However, the situation also forced him to consider what he would do if she wanted to cross him. Cutting her limbs off and forcing her to do what he wanted was on the menu. John’s usual moral constraints were loosened considerably when the limbs and life of several of his women were on the line.
The dense fumes of plague still hung over the room like a purple mist. That mist began to move, to be pulled into the cabin that they had put up for Nahua, and turned denser in the process. Curtain pushed aside suddenly, the inside of the cabin was revealed.
Obscured by the plague, Nahua’s outline rose softly from the purple background. Eyes glowed with baleful energies. The curves of a female shape were barely visible. John made out narrow shoulders and wide hips.
A brown leg cut through the nothing. Naked, taut skin covered muscle and fat. Lines of a much lighter shade of brown covered her skin, forming the by now familiar patterns of Aztec ornamentations. The fog pulled with her as she advanced, swirling towards a raised hand. It condensed ever further, forming a fruit of some kind.
The constant crackling of the Particle Skin finally came to an end just as Nahua stopped in front of John. She was short, shorter than Eliana, barely taller than Delicia. In built, she was closer to the former than the latter. Her breasts were on the verge between small and medium, her overall build slender, but her hips wide and legs equal parts long and thick.
‘Once more, reality shows a bias towards short women with wide hips,’ the Gamer thought.
Nahua held the fully consolidated fruit of disease in her hand. Swiftly, she moved it towards her mouth, taking a huge bite out of it. Sharp canines dug into the purple flesh. The taste seemed to please her. Cutely, she squeaked and tilted her head. White hair, gorgeously messy, fell with the motion. Strands ran criss-cross between her green eyes. Pointy ears twitched. They were shorter than those of an elf yet larger than those of a human.
Four more large bites later, Nahua had fully devoured the fruit. She licked her pinkish brown lips. Her face was free of the Nazca lines that otherwise covered much of her form. In that aspect, she reminded John a bit of Salamander, although the density of lines was much less for this demigoddess.
“Let me have a look at you?” Nahua’s voice was as sweet as the smile she presented. Hands behind her back, she circled around him, taking big enthusiastic steps. “You’re not what I expected, in a good way. I always thought I was tall but you’re almost god-warrior-sized.”
“You’ll find that people got a lot bigger on average over the last 500 years,” John revealed to her.
“500 years?” Nahua reached for the fabric of his suit and inspected it closely. “It has been that long? Makes me wonder how much longer I would have been down there… Does my saviour have a name?”
“John Newman,” he told her. Various windows were moving at the edge of his field of vision. He ignored the options for her Perks for now. He did not want to empower her before he had gotten what he wanted at a minimum. “Is it fine if I call you Nahua?”
“Oh?” There was a subtle and yet blatantly obvious shift in Nahua’s body language. Innocent eyes turned sharp. Her cute smile pulled back further until she revealed her sharp teeth. Despite that, when she got up close to John, standing on her toes to get herself as close to his face as she could, there was no immediate malevolence. She spoke with the unmentioned threat of a remote controlled warhead. “Very forward of you, outsider.” Suddenly, she danced back, twirling on the way. Her voice was right back to that cutesy, upbeat tone. “I’ll allow it, though, because I am just that nice!”
‘Oh God, she’s dangerous,’ John thought. ‘She’s attractive and has character and thick thighs and she’s dangerous. Momo will not react well to this.’ “We’ll have to walk and talk. There’s a sick camp I need to get you to.”
Nahua retained an optimistic smile. It was just that: optimistic. It wasn’t friendly and it wasn’t directed at him either. “I’ll gladly help you defeat the Giant’s Puss,” she told him. She notably skipped on pledging anything more than that. “Let us go, then!”
“One more thing,” John pulled out a shirt, panties, pants, socks and shoes. “You should wear these.”
Nahua’s eyebrows rose softly. “I know it’s not custom, but I think temporary nudity can be excused, yes? My status will survive temporary exposure.”
“I’m afraid the mundane do not accept that anymore…” John said. “Unless you want Gaia to be mad at you, you should wear these.”
The open distaste for the clothes he presented to her was beyond clear. “You dare suggest the daughter of Huitzilopochtli be seen in the clothes of a foreigner?” she hissed, the threat of that inert warhead now a whole lot more real. Undigested disease flowed from her lips in thick fumes of purple and viscous drops of noxious saliva.
John circled his jaw. Weighing his options, he chose the disagreeable one. “I do not have time to get you something that fits your sensibilities,” he barked. “Put them on. We’re going.” He put the entire force of his urgency behind those words, via mental connection and aura.
Glaring at him, Nahua made her own calculations. Her eyes drifted to the haremettes around them, then the broken seal behind her. “Fine!” she spat out, sucking the disease back into her. With one swipe, she grabbed the clothes. “These are so not cute though!” she complained, back to the upbeat tone. “Give me my honour bands, okay, tough guy?”
“These?” John pulled the surviving decorations out of his inventory.
“Yes, please hold them for a second.” Nahua put the shirt over her head. Green was not her colour, John found, but he had just grabbed what he had available. The black jeans fit her much better, as did the sandals. All of it had come from Rave’s wardrobe. Once she had all of the mundane clothes on, she threw over the Aztec marks. “Thank you for the patience,” she said with a wink.
John wondered why she oscillated this much between utterly dangerous and adorable niceness. The more the Gamer witnessed the latter, the faker it felt. It was so fake, in fact, that it became real again, like a perfect repainting of a DaVinci work.
Questions for later.
John raised his hand. Usually he would have gone to the surface first, just to be sure, but getting stuck in an underground cavity would be less awkward than having to deal with the Illuminati forces on the surface. Fortunately, they emerged back up in the jungle. John raised his hand again and entered the battlefield of Rave and Malady.
A massive gust of wind howled over the battlefield. The two women clashing at rapid speeds between and on top of toppled trees. ‘Yep, definitely made the right call not to fight these foreigners,’ he heard Nahua think. He would teach her how to keep those private later.
“Jane! We got what we wanted!” he shouted as a warning, before pulling all of them out of the Illusion Barrier together.
Then it was straight back to the plane.
Comments
Marko
Damn
LOLZMAN
How long ago were the ten divided gates created?
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