Chương 76: George's Run (XI)

George flinched back into existence in the hallway room. He coughed and gasped and pushed himself to his feet. >>We learned a valuable lesson there, George. >>Fishing for sea monsters has many pros and cons, but is NEVER DULL. >>This is it… our final dramatic run! >>We've built up our strength, we've honed our abilities, and we've overcome challenge after challenge. Now, all that is left is to cruise through these scenario rooms and push even farther before we get killed one last time.

>>Anyway, I know what we have to do in the battle room.

"What do you mean?" George said. >>The objective was to reach your potential self. >>It's actually SELF-explanatory… >>Get it?

"Nod I just got killed for the fourth time. If you figured it out, just explain." >>That was you. I saw it right away. It was those spider arms that gave it away. Then George realized what Nod was talking about. >>That was you, George. I mean, it was us. >>In the future. >>Potentially. >>To beat the room, we just have to reach him.

"I don't see how that is possible," George said.

"That thing took on an army by itself." >>I know, right? We'd better keep getting me those familiar upgrades…just saying.

"Nod, if one of these upgrades is going to make you sprout another head out of my shoulders, then I'm sorry, but I think we purchased our last familiar upgrade," George said. >>Come on! It's the ultimate precautionary redundancy! >>I'm sure we won't come to the "Would you like two heads?" option for ages, anyway. >>Probably.

"If he can turn invisible, how are we going to reach him?" George said. >>That wasn't invisibility. That was your time dilation ability. He disappeared because he was slowing time and moving fast. >>I bet solo-ing an army would really ratchet up that threat level, know what I mean? >>We will just have to get his attention somehow. >>… while dodging his Nanite Smoke of Death. >>… and his pet mech army. >>… and the goblin army he was using for target practice.

>>If the simulation is accurate to the degree that future-us has our memories, then maybe all we have to do is get his attention somehow and he'll recognize us like I recognized him.

"How are we going to do that?" >>Let's just say I have some ideas…

"Nod…" >>Ok…. >>My only idea is just spamming amenities again and tossing them into the air until he notices. >>Maybe I can rig up another bomb…? Or light something on fire…?

"Maybe we can ride Jellybean to someplace safe out of the way of the stampeding army, then wait until the battle is done and just walk up to him?" George said. >>Fine. Let's call that Plan A for now. If that fails, I'm making an amenity mountain and shooting some fireworks from the top.

"Ok," George said, deploying the jet ski.

"Here we go. Final run." He mounted the jet ski, cranked the throttle, and raced toward the portal. When they entered the sea monster room, Nod took them to the ceiling as usual, and Identify showed them the position of the token. Nod dropped them down and George drew the token into his hand without any sea monsters interfering. As soon as the token touched his gauntlet, they were zapped into the next room. Once again, Nod supplied the answer to the equation and George typed it into the keypad.

The portal to the next room appeared and he walked through, sitting down at the top of the slide and gaining enough speed to launch him over the gap at the bottom of the tube slide. He was careful to use draw to collect all the gold coins on this run and then he was at the bottom of the slide, standing in front of the portal to the dragon room. He could see that the dragon was tearing into the hunk of meat on the ground with its back to the portal.

"What do you think, Nod?" George said, but before Nod could answer, George felt Writher leave its place on his back and shift itself to his arm. George was surprised but lifted his arm and the spider creature crawled to his hand and anchored itself tightly around his wrist with two tentacles. The other six extended forward and wrapped themselves into a tight braid culminating in a sharp point. George lifted his arm and waved it around.

Writher remained rigid, its tentacles extending three feet past his arm in a tapered blade. >>I think Writher has developed a taste for the joust, sir knight.

"It wants me to stab the dragon?" George said. >>Nah, man. Ram it.

"Ah," George said.

"On Jellybean?" >>Yeah, dummy. Give it a try.

"Do we have a plan B?" George said.

"What if that doesn't work?" >>Then we'll adapt. Just block the fire with your shield and retreat back to the slide room.

"It seems strange that we have been in a fight for our lives this long, picked up futuristic armor, gotten a mysterious power shard embedded in my hand, and acquired a semi-sentient spider weapon, but we haven't found a damn knife. If jousting the dragon doesn't work, am I supposed to just punch the thing into submission?" >>Well, that would be pretty badass if you did.

"Hang on. If we go in there and the dragon kills us, then that's it. If we die again, do we just appear back in that room with Hollywood Cole coming after us? I'm not ready for that. We don't know how to save Cassie yet." >>George, its back is turned. I think the joust will work. It doesn't have metal scales. It is just a flappy lizard. Just get up speed and don't miss. If we poke a hole in that dragon, I think it will count for the portal. We didn't have to kill it before. We just had to disable it.

>>You got this. >>Get in there before it turns around.

"Ok. If it doesn't work, we'll run back here and you'll Code Venom us up the wall and we'll try to find another solution in the amenities." George set the keychain on the ground a ways back from the portal entrance and transformed it into the jet ski. He mounted it and activated the shield, ducking behind it again and raising his Writher-lance above his head. He twisted the throttle and Jellybean silently surged forward, gathering speed and blasting through the portal.

The dragon didn't have time to turn before George drove Writher into its side. The tip pierced the hide, and his momentum buried half the spider-lance in the wound. Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon. The wyvern roared and lurched sideways. Writher remained anchored to George's hand and came out of the dragon's body as George bounced down onto the ground and rolled to a stop. The dragon opened one of its wings and screeched.

The other wing curled protectively over the wound in its side as dark blood gushed onto the floor. As George pushed himself up onto his feet, the dragon reared its head back to spit fire. George willed Writher to go limp and come off his hand. He took the spider by one arm, swung it around like a sling, and flung it at the dragon's face. His aim was off, but Writher used draw to curve its own course and it latched onto the dragon's face, wrapping its arms around the dragon's mouth and snapping it shut.

The monster swung its head back and forth but couldn't dislodge its mechanical muzzle. Writher raised two of its arms, poised to strike. >>Aaaand… here comes the eye needle trick. Writher plunged the needle tips on its two free arms into the dragon's eyes over and over again and the creature's movements became even more frantic. >>You can tell it's my son. >>It is so bittersweet to see the little ones grow up. The portal activated and George minimized the jet ski, drawing it back to his hand.

He walked to the portal and ordered Writher to release the dragon with a mental command. It dropped to the floor and bounced back into the air, using draw to fly onto George's upraised hand like a hunting hawk. George stepped through the portal and the first question appeared. Question One What is the best teacher? A. The burned hand B. The scintillated eye C. The scorned heart >>Any idea what that question means? >>Actually, yes.

>>It is a literary allusion, but I don't know why it would apply as a question ostensibly about your life. >>The answer is A. George said, "The burned hand." Correct. All four green lights above the exit portals remained on. Question Two Who gave Kit the scar under his eye? A. Max B. Jane C. George >>OK. Let's just acknowledge that the answer is probably C because the person making these questions up is a sadistic asshole who has been messing with your head since you woke up with no memory.

>>And we have no other clues in the memories on this one, so pick C.

"C. George," George said. Correct. >>Nice. Last question… if we get this one right, we get to go through the easy portal. >>I, for one, am hoping it'll be a Caribbean cruise where we can sit around in deck chairs working on our tan, playing shuffleboard, and doing karaoke at night. Question Three Who was Sonya? A. Your mother B. Your mistress C. Your niece >>Aaaand now for another low blow… >>You remember this one?

"No." >>There was a Sonya in the office memory when you were about to get fired but figured it out and went back to your office to get your "Dad is the King of Pancakes" tie. >>Memory-George was texting with a Sonya who seemed pretty worried you might be getting fired and who called you honey. >>That probably wasn't your niece or Mrs. Brandiss.

"My… my mistress," George said aloud. Correct. The portal activated in the doorway marked "easy," and George walked over and looked through. It was another large cube room. The ground was studded with head-high golden rods. There must have been more than a hundred. Each rod was slotted into a small hole in the floor of the room. As George watched, a bolt of lightning struck one of the rods and a shower of golden coins exploded upward and rained down on the ground.

The coins started to fade as soon as they touched the ground and in the space of ten seconds, they were gone. Another bolt of lightning hit a rod on the far side of the room and sent another fountain of coins cascading across the room. >>Now we're talking. >>Let's go get rich! George stepped through the portal and saw the room notification. Entering Scenario Room Seven Objective: Collect as many coins as possible in 60 seconds.

Focus Stats: Opportunism, Non-conductivity, Speed Difficulty: Easy A timer also appeared in George's vision counting down from 60. Another bolt struck a rod twenty feet away from George and he jogged forward and cast draw on some of the coins before they disappeared. +9 (253 total)"Wow," George said.

"Easy." Another bolt struck across the room and George ran over to it but wasn't able to collect any of the coins before they disappeared. The next bolt struck a rod beside him and he drew almost all of the coins into his hand. +17 (270 total) More lightning bolts struck and George gathered in more coins. When the timer hit the thirty-second mark, two lightning bolts began to strike at the same time.

George threw Writher toward one of the showers of coins, and it used the draw skill to grab as many as it could before bounding back to him. When the timer hit zero, a new portal opened in the far wall. That brief minute had brought his coin total to the mid-300s. As he walked toward the new portal, George thought about how long it took him to get his first ten coins and how desperate he had been to purchase memories in hopes of learning something about his strange situation. He looked through the new portal.

It was the sci-fi army against the fantasy army again. >>Hang on, George. >>Fate may have smiled on us. See if you can grab one of those little lightning rods. George waited until lightning struck again and then tried to pull one of the rods out of the ground. It slid out of the ground easily. >>This is just a hunch, but I think we have a way to get our future self's attention. George walked through the portal, carrying the pole at his side.

Entering Scenario Room Eight Objective: Reach your potential self Focus Stats: Command, Agility, Proprioception Difficulty: Hard He appeared on the same hillside at apparently the same moment in the battle as last time. A rocket exploded nearby but George didn't take refuge in the crater this time. The monster army shot its magical beam into the ranks of the mech army and the mech army retaliated. >>Wait for it.

They watched the battle unfold for another few minutes and then they saw their future self enter the fray. Once again, they couldn't see the spider-armed warrior; they could only see the path of destruction he left in his wake. >>Now! Plant that lightning rod and let's see if it still works. George raised the pole upright and plunged it into the ground using all of his enhanced strength. It sank a foot deep into the rubble on the blasted hillside.

The second the rod contacted the ground, George felt it began to hum and his hands tingled through his gauntlets. >>Might want to take a step back. George hastily stepped away from the rod. In the battlefield below, the spider warrior had put up his shield again and the beam tower was charging for its shot again. The tower blasted its purple ray at the hemispherical shield around the warrior and the shield popped out of existence, leaving the warrior unharmed.

At that moment, the lightning struck the rod with several bright bolts in quick succession, and the spider warrior turned both of its heads in their direction. The warrior only watched them for the space of a few seconds, then raised his arms again and released the black smoke into the ranks of the monster army. Then, he disappeared as he began to move too fast for George's eyes to track again. This time, however, the path of violence wasn't going deeper into the monster army.

It was traveling directly up the hillside in George's direction. George stepped further away from the lightning rod. Nod raised George's arm and waved at the terrifying warrior making its way up the hill to their position. George pulled his arm down and activated his shield. The black swarm was eating its way through the monster army, and this time the monsters were running away from George's location and from the spider warrior. Then, suddenly, he appeared in front of George, breathing heavily.

The two-headed figure was much taller than George—almost twice his height. Several of the large mechanical spider arms folded in on themselves behind his back. Another hemispherical shield sprang to life around them, enclosing them away from the battle raging in the surrounding valley. George could see the flickering light from the battle outside, but inside the shield there was only silence. >>Holy moly. It's talking to me. I mean… future Nod is. It has a weird language but I can understand it.

>>It's like 100 years old. The node spider doesn't know what we are but it recognizes us. The warrior raised two of its hands to its helmet and it detached from the armor with a hiss. He lifted the helmet off one of his heads and George saw an his own face. At least, it was a version of his own face. The warrior's head was larger than George's, and a large scar ran down his bald scalp, over one eye, and down to his chin. The damaged eye was replaced with a glowing red cybernetic eye.

The flesh where his mouth used to be was a smooth black strip of gleaming metal. >>They think they are real. I mean, they don't know this is a challenge room. They have memories and stuff. >>Future Nod thinks we are the construct and wants to know how we were made, especially how we got a copy of the Ill-Starred Knight shard. >>It's kind of being annoying about it. >>It hasn't even made a single joke yet. >>Also, you don't have a mouth! What the hell is that story?

Then future-George took off his gauntlet and raised the hand containing the Ill-Starred Knight shard. It crackled with red light that arced over the armor and dissipated. The giant version of George gestured at George's own hand, inviting him to remove his gauntlet. >>Ok, so future-Nod just mentioned the Sibilance. >>And it said we have to come with it. I'm getting a very clear come-with-me-or-else vibe. >>Future nod is kind of an asshole. >>I solemnly swear I will never become this boring.

When George did not comply with his other self's mute instruction to remove his own gauntlet, one of the spider arms suddenly unfolded from behind him and snapped out, clamping George's wrist between its two pincers. The instant their hands touched, the room flashed out of existence and George and Nod were teleported away.