Chương 32: MAN ON THE ISLAND

T'balt Ferrier had become a stranded wanderer. With no place to go, he found himself a nomad around the town and the outskirts of the city. They had shoveled him out. Now, his palace, where he had once been considered a savior, would be left undefended, and there was nothing he could do. This iteration couldn't have gone any worse. He stayed from house to house, sometimes staying out in abandoned cars when monster infestations provided him with no other option.

His depressed disposition was merely a lingering apparition. He had gone into survival mode. Something about living out in the wilderness in complete isolation could make one more feral and push the problems of human connection out of the forefront of his mind. There were the beasts to deal with, and Monan was still out there. He supposed this was the best way to avoid him. This way, Monan wouldn't be able to pin down his location. No reason to go after the church. He was sure Monan was behind the bandits' attack.

He had to be. He conveniently showed up right after it, and based on the sounds of dying that came from below, he couldn't have acted alone. He was in league with Nrv or whatever the bandits would call themselves. But did that mean he was the one behind the first attack as well? Was that why he didn't care to defend the church against Nrv? Some weird redemption-spanning allegiance. But Monan wasn't the type to care about that kind of thing. He would kill anyone, no matter the affiliation.

T'balt slaughtered another beast—this one popping off a flame loot coin.

"Hm. Already have one of those." He had equipped one to keep himself warm at night and to cook his meals. The power had completely shut off on day 2, meaning he was without any means to cook, to light his way, or to rest in comfort in the fall months. Fire was useful for all three of those things. Especially now, when it was the middle of the night. But he hadn't experimented with anything beyond. The loot shown on his neck would be the gauntlets and the flame loot.

Of course, the ouroboros was there as well, but that one was useless to him during his life, so he would often forget about it until it woke him up again. He didn't have the best luck loot hunting this time around. He hated that every iteration it felt like a crapshoot of what he would find out in the wild. Sometimes he'd find something really strong, like the psychic loot that put him above and beyond any competition. Other times, it would be basic weapon summons and elementals.

He'd kept a stock to categorize the loot in his head, making a library for what he knew existed and where he'd find it. He also started pairing them into different loot stacks. It's what he called any combination of loot due to the way the tattoos showed up stacked on the back of the neck. Naming and categorizing everything helped him plan. Besides, it was all he could do to pass the time. So occasionally he'd empty his sack of loot, arrange them, and jot down some notes in a notebook he found.

There was elemental loot like the flame, ice, lightning, earth, and wind. He supposed he would include the bears' explosion loot in there as a subset of flame loot. And there were the augmenters, loot that changed parts of the body. Speed, strength, reflex. There were some that could never make it to one of the categories, being too different and on their own. Healing loot, psychic loot. So they would go into the 'other' category for now.

There were the weapon summons, like the Deer King's sword and the gauntlets he wore now. According to Acelin, there were also beast summons where one would summon a strange demon and be in complete command of them. These shaped up to be the most unpredictable, the more T'balt thought about it. What if someone could summon something as large as the guardian angel? He felt the angel watching now. Searching and scouring the land.

It didn't seem to attack anyone, just resting up above, attempting to replace the moon with its light and stone figure. But all T'balt remembered was that the thing attacked him. It was a demon, too, no matter how much it resembled the biblical angels. An angel of a different god. He tried not to give too much credit to Arthur's new theory—that there was a new god to contend with. But that's how Monan referred to the Prime Redeemer, who they killed to get their power from.

But T'balt didn't actually consider the word god as what it truly meant. To him, it was just a powerful being and not something that could write his fate. He killed it after all, and now he had the same powers. If that Redeemer was a god, then that would make both he and Monan gods as well. It was a ridiculous thought. They just didn't know where these creatures came from. He never considered the divine in the true sense. It was all real. The demons were real, the Redeemer was real.

The destruction of Earth was as real to him as flame emanating from his hand. Now that he was alone, he had a seemingly infinite amount of time to think, and he concluded that he didn't believe in god. This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it. He ran into a large humanoid snow beast. Well, "ran into" is a stretch, since it seemed like the beast was searching for T'balt specifically.

He was resting in an empty house when he suddenly felt the roof fly away and ice forming around him. He leaped out the window when he saw it. Big, bushy, and covered in a husk of white fur. It reminded him of the Abominable Snowman or the yeti. The look of it honestly made him laugh. But that laugh was mostly because he knew he didn't have a problem. Ice loses to fire, which meant he was perfectly equipped.

The beast blew a huff of frost smoke, and T'balt shot a wave of flames with his hands, exploding the air in front of him. The beast's attack was made obsolete. Then it tried to send ice shards at him, but again, just a simple flick of flame, and T'balt was unharmed. He could almost see the beast sweating. So he decided to end it quickly, launching himself into the air and slamming a fist of red-hot flame on the yeti's head. It lit up like a bonfire, and the beast wailed.

"Super effective." But hearing the thing burn alive wasn't good on the ears. It was only a beast, acting on instinct. Killing simply because its brain told it to. It was like being at war, killing for the sake of surviving, which was what T'balt was doing now. He made the flames disappear and finished the beast off by driving his gauntlet into its heart. Then he heard the pieces of loot patter against the street.

"That's interesting… Double looted." One was the obvious ice loot, but the other was something different. He couldn't tell by the symbol on it. It was something alien. A triangle of horizontal lines. A man could only have 3 loot, Monan had said. And T'balt was up 2. His curiosity was getting the better of him, but if he tried it, then that would be his last slot if Monan was to be trusted in that manner.

"Why not?" He thought it was only a matter of time before Monan found him, and he was reset again anyway. He placed the squirming coin on his neck and felt it enter his spine, causing him to shudder, never quite getting used to the feeling. Then his eyes flashed red. When he looked, the world started to radiate with a strange energy. His senses suddenly became overwhelming. He could see the vibrations of movement when things weren't moving.

When he looked at his hands, brief auras moved around them where the air had been disturbed. He was startled by a squirrel jumping from a tree, and then he realized it was half a mile away. He pushed his fingers together, rubbing the surface of his skin, acutely aware of every pore and every inconsistency in his hands. He felt his veins move when he clenched his fists and the prickles of each follicle of his hair. This loot was severely enhancing all of his senses.

It was unbearable at first use, so he deactivated it quickly, returning to the look of the normal world. He figured it was how the beast was able to find him so quickly. It was aware of every living, breathing thing in the surrounding area. It could be useful once one got used to that overwhelming feeling. He'd call it the hypersensitivity loot. He activated it again, seeing everything in this block and the next.

"This is actually pretty cool," he thought.

"This would be great for a support role. I wonder if Ellie would…" He retracted the thought, knowing that Ellie was gone from him now. Ever since his first life with the church, his relationship with her had only gotten worse.

"If she loves me, she dies. If she doesn't, she hates me." He tried not to think about it. It wouldn't help him survive now. With the hypersensitivity loot activated, he heard a group of people talking in a nearby store. He could hear them clearly. He could see their silhouettes even from outside the building. But they were all weirdly shaped, implying they were wearing strange clothes or even armor.

"This loot might actually work better for an assassin class." T'balt took a closer look, making out a few of the things they were saying. It was an old drug store, family-run. It didn't look to be ransacked by looters yet. But now was its time. He stood just outside the walls, listening to the people talking inside. There must've been about five of them.

"This place is stacked," one said.

"Not much food here though," another responded.

"Is that all you can think about? We got drugs in here to last a lifetime."

"Is that all YOU think about?"

"I'm just saying we hit a big score. This is gonna be worth I don't know how many points. Points we can cash in for some epic loot."

"Points?" T'balt found that kind of language familiar. The words of someone who treated the world like a video game. He found a window to peek through, and it was just as he thought.

"Nrv." They were wearing the big jackets, the weird masks, and the spray-painted word on the backs of their clothes. They're back. But why? What had changed between this iteration and the last to bring that guy seemingly back from the dead? T'balt kept listening.

"No. Look. Someone had gotten here already. All the important stuff is gone. Unless you need to stock up on laxatives and birth control."

"Tsk... this is bullshit. Why send us out on these stupid runs if someone's already got there first?"

"Well, we tried… can't help that."

"It's fine. I'll just stock up on points when we raid those damn cultists."

"You mean the humanists?"

"Yeah, them at that ugly little church are gonna get me rich. I hear they got a whole stash of loot and resources in a basement like some sort of doomsday preppers. And they're too stupid to even use a bit of loot. Like sitting ducks. It's gonna be a gold mine. Then I might even buy myself a de—" Before the others could respond, T'balt was on top of the man, having shattered the window of the building. He exploded onto him once he heard what they had planned, and his anger exploded to the surface.

"What the hell!" the others shouted.

"An ambush!"