Chương 47: 2.7 Knights of Cydonia - Muse (6:07)

THREAD: Under-MIZ Thread - LIVE TRACKING (Crushed Skirt) BaryByBax Zeke, I'm not saying that you need to spoon feed us the info. All I'm asking for is that you drop something. Give us a breadcrumb or two so we know that we're pointed in the right direction. Half of us are still out there combing through the games trying to prove the Corva body-hopping lore that you dropped. The other half can't agree on which damn game we're supposed to be searching through.

There was a three-page slapfight yesterday about whether or not you're pulling the Corva from Null Protocol and duct-taping him into a Frontiers fic. So… just give us one hint. It doesn't even have to be a big hint. A small one. That's all. We're at a wall here. Help us help you. ArtooDeetoa Yea Zeke. When you're writing your update, have your OC blink once for Frontiers, twice for Tech Reign, and forty-seven times for Syndicate's. SoftLocked Yeaaaaa that's not gonna happen Bary. My man's committed to the bit.

It's best to just sit back and enjoy the ride. Z3ke (Original Poster) Okay. We're in the Halcyon Records Annex. Got done with some creatures. Where to now? Jared is looking at me all angry like. 7Spirals Okay, you're headed for the sealed internal wing of the building. There should be a long hallway near a stairwell leading up to the executive offices. The stairwell has these frosted glass panels on both sides. There's a maintenance access panel near the stairwell. DangerX Patch is really coming in clutch.

Noobcake ^ Danger That's what I was thinking too. I went back and reread the last bit that Zeke posted and he's got Patch filling the Corva role right now. Patch has all that mentor energy and he's keeping Zeke alive. I'm a little suspicious about him though. Cole helping out makes sense. Zeke told him that he wanted to become a historian, and Cole is also probably feeling a little guilty about almost getting him killed in his expedition. But Patch doesn't owe Zeke jack shit. So why's he sticking his neck out?

Lorem-Ipsum Well… it wouldn't be such an issue if Zeke hadn't decided to kill off Corva. He could have had a mentor figure in his fic without trying to shoehorn Patch into the role. Sinnohan Zeke told Cole about the Blooming Witch a while ago and Cole most likely mentioned that she gave Zeke the dimensional storage when he explained wtf happened with Corva. It would be very funny if Patch thought that Zeke is her apprentice and that he got the book on the glyphs from her.

Z3ke (Original Poster) Found the maintenance hatch. Is there anything past here that's going to kill me when I start poking around? 7Spirals Nope. You're all good. No traps or monsters. The hidden panel is on the far wall. Press in at the lower corner. The safe combo is 1-4-1-2. Purple The speech-to-text would be an incredible intel gathering tool, especially if he can make use of multiple tablets at once. Since the tablet appears dead to everyone else, he can easily record a lot of information on the down low.

Noobcake Does the tablet appear dead to everyone else? SoftLocked When he bought the Tech Slate from Riley, he touched it and it glitched out and she said something like "oh man, that one's broken too." Pretty sure that's what Purple is referencing. 10161066 Yea, but that doesn't mean that it looks completely broken to everyone. She just saw the glitch and probably assumed that it was slightly messed up. That's a big difference from having a tablet appear dead.

Aditek I have been wondering for a while now: Could Zeke touch a PC/tablet and then let Cole use it? Based on what we have heard so far, I think he would fit right in with this forum. Would be fun to see the 'reverse isekai' perspective. Imagine the reaction of a mage/scholar having to deal with the user base of this forum. The culture shock alone would be pure comedy. FopperyandWhim Uh. What's going on? Am I in the wrong thread? I was looking for Zeke's fanfic and instead I'm seeing… whatever this is.

All I see is a bunch of random theory posts with Zeke popping up every now and then, and it seems like he's trying to have a convo with 7Spirals. Am I having a stroke? Is this what a stroke feels like? StoryLeech Nah. You're good. Crush had Zeke make a separate thread so the primaries could give advice without clogging up the main story post. He called it a live update thread.

Now Zeke is checking in with "updates" on what he's doing, gets some guidance from 7 and Mushroom, and then goes back to writing the chapter. FopperyandWhim Ohhh. Okay. So we're just… waiting then? StoryLeech Pretty much. I'm almost certain that Zeke is writing the whole chapter right now, but he's drip-feeding us updates to keep all the eyeballs on his story. My money is on a full chapter drop tonight.

Also, while he's "updating" us with his position, a bunch of people realized that he's basically a captive audience right now, so they're jumping in to beg him to drop character for a moment and hand out some hints on where they should be looking to prove the whole Corva body-hopping stuff. And while all that's happening, a few other posters heard that this thread was the place to be, so they're dropping in and throwing out random thoughts on the story.

Purple is campaigning Zeke to use the Tech Slate better, Noobcake is poking holes in everyone's theories and shit stirring, and Serious is trying to inject a little bit of romance into the story. Serious_Senator No I'm not. I'm just saying, I know the temptation is there to really push the angst, but we're getting to a point in this story where every little thing is grimdark. Let's actually see some bonds and love in the face of adversity. If there's no contrast to the evil, there's no reason to engage, you know?

StoryLeech Like I said… romance. Noobcake Yea, but who though? Who should be the target of Zeke's affections? Should it be Riley, the hard-working tinkerer who fixed up Zeke's guitar… and stole his heart? Or is it going to be Corva in some kind of doomed, star-crossed lovers angle? Honestly, a forbidden romance between Zeke and a body-hopping monster would be perfect. The Corva-stans wouldn't know whether to burn Zeke in effigy or praise his name. Panzaro | Who should be the target of Zeke's affections?

| Blooming Witch Waifu stonks going to the moon right now lol. Roderick-Vivar I had a dream about this story last night. I do not recall much of it, but the part I can recall involved someone stealing Corva's ankh while classless and somehow managing to kill him, which then booted the player out of his game and his save was gone. Except when he looked into his save folder it was still there, but the file name was changed to "Corva."

StoryLeech Also worth noting is that some folks are just posting random nonsense because they think it's funny that Zeke has to scroll through everyone's comments in order to get 7Spirals' advice. FopperyandWhim | when he looked into his save folder it was still there | Wait… aren't saves all cloud-based? TVEye Oh, you sweet summer child. Tell me you're young without telling me you're young. Back in the before-times, games made actual save folders on your computer. Actually, Fracture titles still do.

They'll show up in your local files. Byte-Sized OMG ZEKE. Please. Save us from this edging. Drop the chapter already, or at least stop blue-balling us with these micro-updates. CradleOfMirth Dood. Chill. Writing takes time. He'll update when he updates. Liminal_Archivist I'm with TV on this. These tiny updates are driving me nuts. John-Jimmson You know, I was thinking that there are some things Zeke could do to make the story more accessible. Currently, Zeke is writing his posts like they are diary entries.

While this certainly makes sense for the situation, I think it hurts the action and stakes by making everything feel less immediate. Like we're being told a story long after the fact rather than seeing it through his perspective. This weakens the action, and it makes it hard to truly engross oneself in the events of the story. CradleOfMirth He's kind of trapped by his premise though. He can't exactly whip out his Tech Slate mid-fight and start liveblogging.

Remember when he tried to do that back with the Jackal Runners? Dood failed so hard at that. Also, switching narrative styles halfway through his fanfic would lead to whiplash. Dood isn't breaking character, still running around pretending to have been isekai'd into the Fracture-verse. If he suddenly goes third-person cinematic, that might break immersion. Z3ke (Original Poster) Oh, I'm sorry John. Would you like me to live-narrate all the danger that I find myself in?

Do you want me to pull up my Tech Slate and have it constantly on speech-to-text so that when I'm getting attacked you all can get a running commentary on it?

"Okay guys, quick update. Just swung my guitar at this dude and brained him. There's so much blood everywhere. Oh. Shit. His friend didn't like that and now he's trying to kill me. I got away. Wait… he's tracking me by the sound of my voice because you all demand content. Ahh. I'm dead now. Smash that follow button." The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation. Noobcake Don't forget the fact that you're actively hiding that your Tech Slate lets you connect to this forum.

If Milicent knew that she could just kill you and steal your tablet to get that free glyph bible, she'd absolutely take that deal. StoryLeech Mmm… John's not wrong though. Past tense kind of saps some punch out of the story. Telling us your adventures isn't really conducive to a good action story. You either need to update more frequently (pretending you're doing it during your downtime) or you should fully commit to a performative retelling "once you're safe" instead of saying "hey, I made it back to The MIZ.

Here's everything that happened." MushroomCleric OOO. Zeke. You still haven't leveled Performance, right? Do what I had you do with History when I had you summarizing those books for Patch and Cole. Tell us your story like you're on stage or we're all sitting around a fire and you're trying to keep our attention. Z3ke (Original Poster) Jesus. Fine. We'll try it your way. No promises that this doesn't suck though. I'm not a writer and suddenly changing everything seems like it's gonna get you all pissed at me.

But whatever. Here it goes. You're with me now, wandering into the Under-MIZ. Every step you take you're walking over powdered glass and spent bullet casings and bloody sidewalks. All of your steps are too loud and you flinch when they echo through the city. You know this place is dangerous. Everyone told you that it was. All the stories that Patch and Jared and Milicent shared with you about the Under-MIZ inevitably end with "... and then everyone died." So, you're freaked out. Wait. Ew.

I don't like this style at all. Let me restart. Z3ke (Original Poster) Zeke stepped into the Under-MIZ with the rest of his team and the sight of it all was Jesus. That was worse than before. I refuse to talk about myself in the third person. MushroomCleric Maybe just cut out the whole opening line. You know, where you summarize everything and talk about how you're in a safe spot now. Instead, just talk to us like we're there with you. Z3ke (Original Poster) This is gonna be horrible. I shouldn't be this calm.

That was the first thought that ran through my mind when I stepped into the Under-MIZ. From what everyone had told me, I knew that this place was one of the most dangerous regions in Frontiers. Honestly, I should have been more freaked than I was. But I couldn't stop staring out at the city stretched out before me with a sense of awe. Someone earlier in the thread, I think it was Serious, said that I needed to talk more about the beauty in the world. That's probably good advice.

All the horrors that I've seen and lived through over the past month have started to wear on me. So it was nice to just take a minute and look out at the Under-MIZ. I kept thinking about all that I'd done since getting dumped into this world, and it made me realize how absurdly different my life has become lately. I mean, never would I have imagined I'd get the chance to see an honest-to-god post-apocalyptic hellscape. I don't even mean that sarcastically.

I'm not trying to be like "oh, you guys have me visit the best places /s." No. The Under-MIZ is kinda impressive and oddly beautiful if you squint hard enough. Not that it isn't a mess. Because it is. Buildings lean into each other at impossible angles. Some are still intact, but most have been split open and had their insides torn out to spill into the open air. There was this office building I passed that had its entire front facade cleaved off and desks were dangling out over the void.

The Anchor Guild and various scavenger teams have tried to make the place semi-livable. Kinda. They've reinforced and rebuilt certain sections of the city. Steel braces have been jammed into cracked concrete and rope bridges have been strung up between buildings. There are a bunch of ladders that have been welded straight into the walls of collapsed buildings, allowing people to climb up into them. The entire Under-MIZ feels less like a ruin and more like a scavenger-built treehouse.

We'd only been walking for about thirty minutes when I paused and looked out at the city and muttered to myself "Why's it called the Crushed Skirt?" I didn't really expect an answer, especially with how quiet I thought I was being, but Jared heard me and explained.

"Out skirts of the old city. Looks like a giant stepped on it." He's loquacious like that. Ostensibly, I'm in charge of our little expedition. I'm the one who gathered everyone together and promised a big payday and set our goals. But in reality, I'm much more like Cole during the expedition to the Valley of Echoes. I'm a figurehead.

I've got the least amount of experience out of everyone in the group, so in the interest of not dying, Jared took on the leadership role for the team as we picked our way through the city. He kept a couple steps ahead of us, telling us where to walk. He carried a piece of green chalk that he used to mark corners and walls as we marched along obediently behind him. When I asked him what he was doing, he explained that he was marking "route indicators. Potential hazards. Fallback points."

Daryl was quiet as we walked, his head constantly on a swivel. He was keeping an eye out for rival scavenger crews, making sure that they wouldn't bother us. And Milicent brought up the rear, her hand hovering near the machete that she kept at her hip. If I didn't know that she desperately wanted that glyph book, and to get it I needed to safely make it back to the Roaring Drake, I'd be a little worried about her at my back.

About an hour into our trip, it became obvious to me that we weren't alone in the Under-MIZ. Somewhere, deep in the ruins of the city, I heard hammering. It was metal on metal and I couldn't tell what was causing it. Then I caught the flash of light streaming through broken windows. Voices echoed through the streets, bouncing and warping and becoming garbled to the point that I couldn't tell where they were coming from. I saw the first scavenger crew shortly thereafter.

I watched them move carefully through a half-collapsed tower, picking their way over rubble. I kept my eyes on them until they vanished behind a slab of concrete and I figured they weren't interested in us. Once they disappeared and I felt like I could breathe again, Jared leaned in close.

"That's not the only crew out here." I shot him an inquisitive look and he nodded towards another building about two blocks away.

"Two crews in that one. It's okay though. They're more likely to fight each other than come after us." From that point on, Jared led us in a slow, looping path through the Crushed Skirt. We doubled back and cut across half-collapsed offices. We took routes that made absolutely no sense to me, but were apparently a way to keep from leaving an obvious trail.

"There're crews down here who don't bother scavenging anymore," Milicent told me.

"They just wait. It's easier to take someone else's haul than to find something new." Which… great. Love that. Every so often, Jared stopped us dead. He crouched low and pressed a hand to the floor or a wall and just… listened. It was odd. I don't fully know what he has in terms of skills and talents. Patch tried to explain to me what a delver was capable of, back when he first introduced me to Jared. It's something about how they can feel a city and ruins. Or they can converse with the spirit of the city.

Whatever it is, Jared has some kind of danger sense that lets him know when a path we're traveling on has hidden dangers, but it only works in cities and ruins. Eventually, Jared led us into the shell of a two-story house that had been stripped clean ages ago. We were there to rest and relax before getting back to it. We took a breather, and while we were there I asked Jared about what was around us. He pulled out a stub of charcoal and used my journal to sketch out a rough map.

In a few minutes he detailed the surrounding area which was filled with vertical drops, chokepoints, unstable floors, and entire sections of the city that he flat-out refused to enter. Looking at it all laid out in front of me made my stomach twist. The whole place was a deathtrap. Once Jared was finished with the map I pulled up the forum and relayed all the information to 7Spirals, doing my best to translate Jared's map into words. Somehow, it was enough to give 7 a sense of where we were.

He messaged back and told me to look for a building called the Halcyon Records Annex. Apparently it used to be an old storage facility that had been contracted out by the government to handle archival overflow. I found the spot on my map and called Jared over and pointed to it. He nodded slowly before shaking his head.

"Been picked clean," he said.

"Explored to hell and back. Nothing there worth the risk." Obviously, 7 disagreed. According to him, there was an entire secret internal wing to the building that the community had discovered back when Frontiers had first launched and people started skipping the boring buildings when they ventured into the Under-MIZ. He claimed that the place was well hidden and doubted that most scavenger crews would even think to look twice at it. I told Jared we were changing course and he stared at me for a long moment.

The look on his face screamed out you fucking idiot, you're gonna get us all killed. But to his credit he didn't argue. He just adjusted our route and started leading us that way. We found the Halcyon Records Annex wedged between to crumbling towers. It was an ugly, squat thing with its windows blown out and the interior almost completely pitch black except for a few thin slashes of light that cut through the place. We slipped inside, trying to keep low and stay quiet.

But not ten feet into the building we ran into them. Splitmaws. I learned the name a little too late. When you look at them, it's obvious why they are called splitmaws. Picture something that sits low to the ground, only reaching about waist-high. They've got six legs but… legs isn't really the best word to describe them. It's like someone grafted human arms onto a lump of muscle. The elbow-knee thing was a bulbous mass that allowed them to launch themselves into the air.

When they move, they coil and explode upward, shoving off the ground hard enough to reach head height. And holy shit their mouths. They've got this vertical slit that starts at the base of their skull and runs all the way down to their stomachs, and when they open their jaws it's like watching a body bag unzip itself. Their mouths are filled with jagged, uneven teeth and so much drool. I didn't see any eyes, meaning either they don't have them or my brain just refused to look at anything beyond the mouth. I froze.

Thankfully, Daryl didn't. He stepped forward and fired his sawed-off shotgun the moment we moved into the room. The blast was deafening in the enclosed space. One of the splitmaws took the blast full-on and simply… vanished. Blood and mucus and a thick greenish fluid painted the wall and the ground. The other three splitmaws screamed and it sounded like metal tearing itself apart. They launched themselves into the air at us. Milicent was already moving, charging straight into the room with her machete out.

She caught one of the splitmaws mid-jump, her blade biding deep into one of its arm-legs. The creature hit the ground and shrieked in pain and she didn't let up. She just started chopping away at the thing, green fluid splashing through the air and coating her. Jared was right there with her. One of the Splitmaws tried to leap at him but he caught it with his war club. The impact sounded like smashing something into wet cement. The creature collapsed and started twisting and Jared kept smashing into it.

There was only one left. The one that had jumped at me the moment we got into the room. I panicked and yanked my guitar out of my dimensional storage, barely registering it before the creature was already on me. Its mouth was opened impossibly wide. I swung and the guitar connected with a solid, bone-rattling crack. The vaultstone in the neck flared faintly, and the Splitmaw flew sideways, slamming into the wall hard. It tried to scramble back up, its limbs scrabbling uselessly on the concrete.

Daryl didn't give it the chance. He turned, raised his shotgun, and fired. The Splitmaw turned into mist. Silence blanketed the room. I looked around to check that nobody was injured and, finding us all still standing and seemingly untouched, I almost felt my legs give out. The whole fight had only lasted a few seconds.

I stood there, my heart hammering in my chest, and I realized something that probably should have been a little unsettling: I wasn't nearly as wrecked as I'd been after fighting the jackal runners back in the Deadlands. I don't know if it's my melee skill climbing or it's just me getting used to this world, but the thought stuck with me. I caught Jared glaring at me out of the corner of my vision.

He'd tried to warn me against heading into the building, saying the entire place had already been picked clean, and I had basically told him to shut up and follow me. In short, I had turned into the kind of boss that I always hated: the kind that refuses to listen to what the more experienced people have to say. But in fairness to myself… I had a forum filled with a bunch of lore nerds who knew all about the Under-MIZ. And that proved incredibly beneficial about ten minutes after our fight with the splitmaws.

I found the access hatch exactly where 7Spirals said it would be. The thing was welded shut and I couldn't tell if it was from years of neglect or a deliberate security decision. Either way, the thing wasn't going to open on its own. I pointed out to the group that it was our way in, and that's where Milicent proved her worth. She knelt down and started sketching out a small glyph circle around the hatch. Within minutes I could feel the air start feeling…

prickly, and that's how I knew the glyph was grabbing ambient mana. A low hum built up, the metal around the access hatch groaned, and then the whole thing tore free. We slipped inside and crawled our way into the sealed inner wing of the Halcyon Records Annex. When we finally all fit through the maintenance hatch and got into the wing, our mouths dropped. The place was entirely untouched, which meant that the whole wing was filled with loot. A lot of loot. A lot of potentially very expensive loot.

Jared shot me a look that had morphed from you're going to get us all killed to something that was closer to reluctant approval.

"Alright," he said.

"Maybe." I'm taking that as a win. Venturing through the sealed wing was… an experience. It wasn't like the rest of the Under-MIZ, which I'd slowly become accustomed to over the past couple hours. I'd grown used to cracked walls and sagging ceilings and everything looking like it was left to rot and lived in by scavengers and monsters and desperate people trying to survive in a broken world. But this place was different. For one, it was cleaner. There weren't any signs of scavenger camp activity around.

The lights were all dead, but I tossed a few glowstick-like markers through the place and it lit everything up and cast it all in a dim green haze. THe walls were intact. The ceiling panels were still there. Even the carpet was still carpet and not a stained, threadbare mess. We headed deeper into the wing and every step we took kicked up a plume of dust that had probably been settling there for over a century. Cabinets lined the walls of the wing, some labeled and some not. Most were still closed and sealed.

I opened one at random and found a stash of liquor bottles, all neatly arranged inside. Their labels were yellowed with age but still legible. Whiskey, Vodka, and Rum. In short, all the hallmarks of a well-stocked bar.

"Holy shit," Daryl muttered. The bottles were dusty but intact, and I instantly started calculating how much the liquor could get us. We kept walking and eventually passed into what looked like a break room. A long table sat in the center with chairs scattered around it. They were all knocked over, looking like someone had stood up too fast and sent them all crashing to the ground. A deck of cards was spread out across the table and a half-empty bottle lay on its side.

The liquid inside had congealed into a thick, goopy mess. It hit me at that moment. This was a snapshot of the last normal hours before the Fracture. People had been here, working in this building. They'd been playing cards and drinking and killing time. Maybe they were on their break. Then something happened. There was probably an alarm or an announcement. People would have started screaming and panicking, thinking that this was the end of the world. They ran… and never came back.

Thankfully, there weren't any skeletal remains. I didn't find any bones slumped in the corner like I would have if this had been Fallout or any other post-apocalyptic game. But… honestly, that kinda made everything so much worse. I mean, at least with bones there would have been some kind of closure. I could have made up a story about how the skeletons had been people once. I could have told there story, and how they had come face to face with the end of the world and they didn't have anywhere else to go.

I don't know. Maybe I'm just freaking out because I look around the Under-MIZ and the whole place is creepy and gets under my skin and I'm freaked that there are creatures like the splitmaws down here. That, and I did find a few things in the sealed wing that made me feel like I was trespassing on a memorial ground or something. We found offices with personal effects still on the desks.

There were nameplates and family photos and a coffee mug with a crack down the side that had obviously been repaired with super glue. In one office there was a coat hanging on the back of a chair. The thing was stiff with dust and old age. On the desk was a handwritten note there. My hand hovered over the note, itching to turn it over and read what it said, wanting to know what was so important that a person would take the time to write out a note while the world was crashing down on them. But I didn't.

For some reason, that felt like crossing a line. Milicent was the first of our group to break the silence.

"Alright. No use just standing around. Let's get to work." That snapped us back into scavenger mode and we split up. Jared checked the structural integrity of the place and made sure everything wouldn't just start collapsing down on our heads. Daryl hunted for anything that might be useful tech-wise. Milicent went straight for anything that looked like it could be repurposed into trade goods. I floated between them, cataloguing everything and offering up the use of my dimensional storage space to carry everything.

That got me some looks.

"Are you sure?" Daryl asked.

"That's…asking for a lot of trust." I shrugged.

"If I wanted to screw you all, I wouldn't have brought you here." What I left unsaid was the fact that if I was carrying everyone's loot, that would give them more incentive to keep me alive until we made it back topside. We stripped the place down to the studs. Everything of value went into my storage space and I wrote down a list of what each of them claimed in my journal. Then, I went searching for the reason 7Spirals had me head into the Annex in the first place.

There was nothing obvious on the far wall of the sealed wing. It was just another stretch of paneling that everyone ignored as just part of the background. Hell, if 7 hadn't told me about it I would have just walked past without thinking about it. I stepped closer to the wall and Jared noticed, but he didn't say anything. I pressed my palm to the wall and searched for the section that would let me open the wall. There was a soft click and the wall shifted, opening just enough for me to get purchase with my fingers.

I opened it up, and there was a safe there. That caught everyone's attention and they huddled close to me while I knelt down and wiped away the dust on the keypad of the safe. It was dark and dead, but Milicent pushed me to the side and sketched out a small glyph circle on the top of the safe. We waited for a moment and then the keypad started glowing with life. I entered the code. 1-4-1-2. And the safe popped open with a smooth, almost cheerful thunk.

I let out a laugh at the tidy cache of items that were still in the safe, including what looked like a small black power charger. Then I quickly tossed it all in my dimensional storage space and stood up. Jared stared at the open safe, then over at me. He didn't say anything, but the look lingered. Finally, he spoke up.

"We should get moving," he said.

"This place is stable, but I don't like lingering. It's not safe." So we left the way we came. We didn't bother closing up the entrance to the sealed wing. We'd looted everything already, and if someone could come along and find value in what we left behind they were welcome to it. Then we set out on a path that Jared assured me would guide us to the Anchor Guild where we could get a map to lead us deeper into the Under-MIZ.