Chương 80: 79-The Last Three Hundred Feet

Billy swore as he fell through the Celestial Gate into a dirty, abandoned alley. He tried to slow his breathing and calm down. The Widow had used Bob's own trick against them, neutralizing him, the most powerful Loser asset in the fight. After what he had seen the Widow do, he was terrified about how the battle might end without him. He scanned the city skyline, easily picking out the Black Tower. They were very near it when he got teleported out of the fight—he was much farther now.

He had to approach the Tower again and look for his friends in the sewer entrances near it. He ducked as he saw a beast that looked like a two-headed lizard gallop past him. Suddenly, the monster stopped and sniffed the air. Its two heads turned in his direction. It had located him. Suddenly, the monster stopped and sniffed the air. It began to run again, exiting the alley. Billy released his breath. He had to play this carefully if he wanted to reach Jenna.

If he panicked, he would be detected and lose precious time. He was willing to burn through possible realities like a flame through gauze to help Jenna. He advanced for a few minutes, angry at the slow speed of his crawl. He had to use his reality rewriting powers three times just to advance half a mile. Fortunately, making a mob look the other way was a simple change that did not demand too much of his magic. They had turned Julta into a mess—human and inhuman corpses littered the streets.

He felt a pang of pain when he saw the body of a Jenna nailed to a wall by multiple arrows. She looked very young and very afraid. Many of the buildings had crumbled down, and around a third of the city was on fire. Most of the civilians had already fled the city when the chaos began, but even so, the number of casualties appeared to be in the thousands. We did this. No matter how we spin it, we did this, Billy thought.

He decided to give himself the benefit of the doubt—they had to do it to save the universe, after all. He felt a moment of profound shame when he realized that Necessity must say that very same thing to himself every day. Enough. Jenna was fighting. She and Bob could be dying—he had no time to wallow in self-pity. He kept advancing. Finally, crawling when he had to, running when he could afford to, and shuffling reality like a pack of cards, he made most of the way towards the Tower.

The entrance to the tower was at the southernmost end of a huge square lined with rows of statues of what he guessed were Julta's royals. This was near enough. Billy was in the middle of a wide but deserted walkway, which granted him a clear view of all the streets converging in the square. Most of the streets contained manholes. One led to the sewer passage in which Jenna and Bob could be fighting for their lives. He could vaguely make out a human figure in the distant entrance to the Black Tower. Could that be…

Bob? Suddenly, with a tremendous roar, the building to his left collapsed into rubble. The thing that had been hiding behind it glared at him with absolute hatred. It was a titanic three-headed Billy, the size of a two-story building, with huge muscles that rippled as he walked and six arms holding various bladed weapons. One of them was a machete with the word Ethel engraved on the blade. Red William noticed Billy, who was trying to hide at the end of the street, and charged at him with a joyful roar.

He would kill again. Billy concentrated, trying to shuffle reality, seeking a timeline in which Red William did not detect him. The monster's powerful spirit rebuffed his attack. Red William noticed Billy, who was trying to hide at the end of the street, and charged at him with a joyful roar. He would kill again. Damn. He couldn't rewrite him, and his powers wouldn't work on himself.

Billy saw the monster raise one of his machetes, as if in slow motion, as Billy dove sideways, using his enhanced body to avoid the blow. He had to think fast. His magic would not affect this monster directly, or himself, but that did not mean he was defenseless. The machete struck the ground, sending debris flying. The machete struck the ground, sending debris flying and revealing the sewer beneath the pavement. The blow was so mighty that it created a door-sized breach.

Billy jumped into the sewer and ran as fast as his legs could carry him. A huge wall of steel suddenly plunged down in front of him, nearly impaling him. The monster was plunging his blade through the pavement, trying to skewer the pest it knew was hiding there. The machete went out and came in again, this time striking three meters to his right. Billy knew that sooner or later, the monstrous blade would hit him.

He sent his thoughts through the timelines, looking among possibilities for one that could help him in this fight. He saw many different sewers through many different eyes, until he found one he could use: a modern city with a functioning electrical grid. Sewers with a high-voltage cable running through them. For a second, what could have been was—the machete went down again, striking the cable and transmitting a dreadful surge of electricity through its metallic frame. A roar of pain came from above.

The stench of cooked flesh filled the air. The thump of a giant body falling on the ground made Billy's very teeth shake. He then felt something new, an exquisite sensation that could only be perceived with the Everlasting's senses—a corpse-camping charge being spent. Billy saw two titanic hands push through one of the breaches created by the machete strikes and literally pull the street apart. Red William glared at him from above—he was even bigger than before.

This thing did not corpse-camp others—it corpse-camped itself. One of his six hands reached down and grabbed him. Billy felt as if every one of his bones was about to burst. The monster held him to his face, like a child holding a canary. It smiled, a mad, pained, happy smile. Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road. Billy knew he had to act or he was doomed. If this thing killed him, he would fail his oath and be condemned to Limbo. But what could he do?

He could not rewrite himself, and the giant was too powerful to bypass his spiritual defense. Billy could feel thirty-two corpse-camping charges nested inside the giant's aura. Snap! One of his ribs cracked. Billy felt panic take hold of him as his body started to die. Whenever one of the corpse-camping charges inside Red William exploded—either because the giant was killed or because he slew a significant enemy—he would be reborn more powerful.

If they became unstable because the monster stopped killing, they would explode all at once and take him back to the Blue Room in a depowered form. It was a beautiful system, a reverse form of corpse-camping that guaranteed the monster would keep fighting as long as there were enemies around. Billy was a Loser, and Losers and systems did not get along. Snap! A second rib cracked. Billy felt the bitter taste of his own blood in his mouth.

He bought a Loot charge and inserted it into his enemy's body—he had to do something, and he had to do it now. Billy used his reality-altering powers, not on Red William or himself, but on the charge itself. The Loot charge remained stable, lying in wait among all of Red William's corpse-camping charges. The Loot charge exploded, causing a chain reaction. Billy's mind pushed, giving the different charges a common past and the same origin. All the charges, now identical, exploded at the same time.

Red William screamed in agony as he felt his very essence transform. He respawned once more. He respawned as loot. The multilimbed giant dissolved in a flash of blue light as Billy fell heavily on the floor, the impact knocking the breath out of him. He had fallen from the height of a three-story building. Only his enhanced stats saved him. Billy grunted and stood up slowly, the whole world spinning around him. There was no trace of the giant, but he found something else.

A beautiful, normal-sized machete, with the word Ethel engraved on it, lay nearby, its point dug into the ground. Without knowing why, Billy approached and grabbed it. It dissolved into motes of light which entered his body, much as the spear of Belegrin had once done. Achievement Unlocked: You Greedy Bastard. You did not kill Red William. You looted him. That was cruel. Power unlocked: Spend one measly achievement point to summon the Red Machete.

It is a high-quality weapon that enhances your stats when you kill significant foes with it. It may also grant additional powers based on the foes you kill. As it makes you more powerful, it will also increase your bloodlust. Kill enough, and you will not want to send it back to the Blue Room. P. S.: It is amazing how many different ways exist to kill someone who can't die. Food for thought.

Billy did not even spend a second pondering the module's weird messages or the implications of what he had done—he had to find Jenna. He entered the square and inspected the manhole covers, trying to choose one to enter the sewers. Suddenly, one of them flew into the sky, as if it had been hit with a massive force. His girlfriend and Bob crawled out of it. He ran to her and gave her a brief, fierce hug. Then, he turned towards the Tower.

"Come on, the danger is not yet over. Any surviving assassin will converge here; we must go." The three Losers ran towards the now-not-so-distant entrance to the Tower. Only three hundred feet away. The last three hundred feet.

"Is that a Bob?" asked Jenna as they neared the Tower.

"I think so," answered Billy.

"He has not moved in this whole time. He just seems to be waiting there." They approached more carefully. He was indeed a Bob, dressed in some plain, ascetic robes and seated in the lotus position. His eyes were closed as he meditated deeply. He opened them as they approached.

"I do not fight—I resist. I am the immovable object. You shall not pass."

"Did he just pull a Gandalf on us?" asked Jenna.

"Whatever, we don't have time for this," she said as she neared the entry. Suddenly, she stopped. The Bob was exerting incredible psychic pressure, preventing her from moving an inch toward the entrance.

"I spent seven years meditating on top of a mountain to perfect this perk. No force can overwhelm me, as long as I only resist. You shall not pass."

"I was afraid it would come to this," said Bob as he threw a fireball at his twinner's face. The fireball flickered into a spark of light that fell at the other Bob's feet. The Losers did the best they could for the next three minutes: the man could not be persuaded, frightened, hurt, or rewritten.

"We do not have time for this," complained Jenna.

"Just being here puts us in danger."

"Give me the Icosahedron, and I will let you pass," said Immovable Bob.

"I knew I would eventually find you here," a familiar voice said. They turned around, expecting the worst, but they were greeted by a friendly face: Irina's, their innkeeper and the first Jultan they had ever met.

"How long have you been watching?" Jenna asked suspiciously.

"Long enough to know that you are who you say you are. Do not blame me—there are a lot of you around. Is that one an Immovable Object?" asked Irina, studying Bob.

"It has been a long time since I saw one of them," she said critically.

"We can't affect him," Billy complained.

"He is going to ruin all our plans."

"Yes, yes, yes. The thing you have to remember when dealing with one of these is that any immovable object also affects the structure of everything around it. They basically act as a cosmic fulcrum." Irina made a gesture with her right hand, and the Immovable Bob was no more.

"Where has he gone?" gasped Billy.

"He is standing just where he was," explained Irina.

"I just moved the whole universe around him. His relative position is now eight hundred leagues south of here." Yes, yes, yes?

"I knew there was something familiar about you. You just gave yourself away," Jenna said.

"You are Dawn, aren't you? Not the Dawn we know. One of the many Dawns that inhabited Belona's past, often at the same time." Irina's face shifted into that of their friend.

"You got me. Of course, I am going to help you. I have prayed long and hard for this day. I never thought I would see it come true."

"But will not this create all kinds of paradoxes? If you remember our faces and what we are going to do now, will it not change the way you react to us in the future?" asked Billy.

"Billy, I have been meddling with the timelines for literally thousands of lives. Of the many things that can create paradoxes, memories are the easiest to fix. Once you are gone, I will erase my memories of you and replace them with false ones. I take it we will meet in the future. When we do, it will be the first time for me. I will react exactly as I am supposed to do." As they were talking, they saw a crowd forming around them. Bobs. Jennas. Billys. All of them different. All of them alike.

All of them shared the same goal—to steal the Icosahedron from them.

"My God, that bastard keeper has kept calling more assassins all this time. There must be nearly one hundred of them," said Bob.

"This does not look good." Three more people emerged from the crowd, not twinners this time. A mature woman, a young girl, and an elderly widow.

"I have brought friends too," Dawn said.

"These three are the only ones I trust. Get into the Tower. We will cover you."

"You will do nothing of the sort," one of the Jennas said, a terrible-looking one in black armor and wielding a whip.

"We know who you are. You are the first alpha. Even so, you will need more help to stand against us. Your bridge partners are just not going to cut it."

"My bridge partners?" Dawn laughed.

"I tell you, these three are the only ones I trust. And I trust no one."

"Go," she ordered the Losers as she blocked the assassins' path. As the Losers entered the Tower, Billy looked back once more, and then he understood Dawn's words. He knew she had been living most of her life in a non-linear way, often existing in several places at once. There were four Dawns covering their exit.

"They are only one person. We can take them—we only have to defeat one of them, and the others will die."

"Let's put that to the test," Dawn said grimly. As all the assassins converged on the Dawns, Billy had one last chance to look at them, standing firm together—unafraid and unbeaten.