#011 – Do you guys believe me now?

#011 – Do you guys believe me now?

I took a deep breath and glared at the dungeon’s entrance.

It still looked incredibly out of place and not at all what one would imagine when you said ‘dungeon’. But to be perfectly honest, everything in this world felt weird like that. So with that in mind, I made the executive decision to just roll with it. It was going to be better for my sanity in the long run.

“Alright, chat. Attempt number two,” I declared as I stepped over the threshold and let the uncomfortable feeling settle over me once more. I didn’t flinch or yelp this time.

No. I was confident now. Or at least, I pretended to be confident and hoped it would be enough. Fake it till you make it, right?

SpoOo0oOon: I still think you should sleep first...

Jeofffff: now just don’t get swarmed again

JamieWasTaken3: mb make a run for the chest

Jeofffff: no go for stealth

“I’ll advance slowly and will keep checking both sides with my heat vision. Not getting swarmed again... I’ll go to sleep later, Spoon... I want the chest first, at least.”

I advanced slowly and carefully, sword in my hand, eyes scanning my surroundings while periodically switching between normal and heat vision.

I hadn’t investigated the rooms on the other side of the windows last time a whole lot, but now that I looked, they didn’t make much sense. Some of them were tiny cubicles, others were massive sprawling rooms. The truly odd thing was that from the looks of things, some of the rooms were large enough that two or more windows would logically have to all connect, but when scanning the next window over, it led to a different room.

“Chat, we have non-euclidean physics going on...” I murmured as I finally spotted the room with the chest in it. “Oh, hey. It’s the chest room!”

It was one of the bigger rooms and I couldn’t quite see all of it. But I could see the chest opposite of the window as well as several empty tables with chairs strewn around the place.

I swiftly looked around myself one more time just to make sure I wouldn’t get ambushed and then gingerly climbed inside the room over the windowsill.

As soon as I did, I spotted the pair of faceless zombies in the corner milling around. Naturally, they also spotted me and began charging at me the moment my feet hit the floor on the other side.

I readied my sword, breathed in, and spat fire at one of them, trying to concentrate as much of it on one enemy as possible, as I’d learned to do during my little practice session.

In the meantime, the other one stumbled all the way around a table and into my weapon’s reach and I brought the blade down on its head. Unlike last time, I didn’t miss and the sword hit its mark, splitting the zombie’s skull and stopping it in its tracks.

I instinctively shuddered at the sensation of slicing flesh and cracking a skull. Last time, I had been panicking too much and hadn’t had much time to think about it, but now that I was relatively calm, I couldn’t help but feel disturbed.

By the time the zombie clattered to the floor and stopped moving, the other zombie reached me as well. Its burning body flung itself at me, warped hands aiming at my throat. I side-stepped its lunge while swinging my blade through its trajectory.

It made a shallow cut along the zombie’s arm and made it stumble and crash into a nearby chair, but otherwise didn’t seem to hinder it a whole lot. I didn’t let it recover and rammed my sword forward, aiming for the head.

I missed, but still hit its throat.

It didn’t take long until the thing stopped thrashing and stopped all motion.

I belatedly realized that my breaths were quick and heavy and my body was shaking as I backed off from the downed zombie. A few seconds later, the zombie and the fire burning it suddenly turned into a fine mist and dispersed into the air, leaving behind nothing but the faint smell of burnt flesh. The other zombie had also disappeared at some point.

Okay, VR games had not prepared me for this. Just seeing and hearing things was different from having all of my senses confirm what was going on. That sensation of slashing the zombie’s skull open... I felt like I’d murdered someone, even though it had only been a dungeon monster that despawned after I’d killed it. And the smell...

I took a deep shuddering breath and then slowly breathed out.

JamieWasTaken3: yo good job!

Jeofffff: loot time!

bloopbooper: blooop! ♡⸜(ˆᗜˆ˵ )⸝♡

GonguuH: that went well

PrestoFive55: is this even allowed on snitch?

“Well, that was intense... And also disturbing. God, that felt nasty... I can still smell the burnt flesh, ugh... And I think I understand the real horror of zombie movies now. It’s not the zombies themselves, it’s the act of killing them that’s the most disturbing...” I shuddered again and shook my head. “At least there was no blood, but still... This was way too different from just VR.” I frowned. “Is what allowed on Snitch? The gore? I dunno...? Actually, speaking of... Is this really being streamed to Snitch? How does that even work?”

JamieWasTaken3: snitch viewcube punch

Jeofffff: viewcube too

RetconRanger: There is also an entire separate website dedicated to this stream.

I briefly checked my surroundings to make sure nothing was trying to creep on me before leaning on a table I stood next to and relaxing.

“Huh? Really? Wait, but I don’t even have a Punch account! And wait, how does the chat work, then? Am I seeing the chats from all the sites combined?”

I probably should have thought about the implications of streaming back to Earth sooner, because seriously... How was it even possible? Granted, everything in this world was weird as heck, but if it all interacted with the very normal non-weird Earth, then there had to be some kind of method to the madness, right? How did the logistics even work?

“Magical pen...?” I said, wanting to be hopeful.

Irid123: it’s a meta pen!

JamieWasTaken3: its a thrown weapon lol

Irid123: write your own script and it will happen!

Jeofffff: ah yes a pen is mightier than a sword

I rolled my eyes, but still walked to a nearby table and wrote ‘And then suddenly, Nana magically teleported back to Earth.’ I waited a couple of seconds and when nothing happened, I shrugged.

“Nope. Not a meta pen.”

Irid123: aww

bloopbooper: boop... (;_;)

I put the pen in my pocket and went back to the chest to inspect the coins next.

There were four of them and they seemed to be made of copper. They all had the same design on them – the number eight on one side and a creepy slitted pupilless eyes on the other.

“...Demon coins? What kind of denomination is this, though? Eight? That’s just weird.”

GonguuH: it could be infinity

JamieWasTaken3: 32 demon copper acquired

“It could... So four demonic infinities...? Still weird.”

I shook my head and put all the coins in my pocket as well. My pockets were starting to get pretty full...

“Well, this is a little disappointing...” I sulked. “Nothing useful. No food...”

I glanced around the room again, pursed my lips as I thought for a moment, and then nodded to myself.

“Okay. Let’s keep going for a little bit. Maybe I’ll find another chest!”

SpoOo0oOon: it’s getting really late though...

Jeofffff: you’re gonna run out of Ether and get yourself killed

SpoOo0oOon: what if you get hurt because you were too tired?

JamieWasTaken3: rip you

“Jeez, thanks for the vote of confidence guys!” I grunted in annoyance and dug through my pockets to fish out the potion. “Look, I still have this thing. When I start running out, I can just eat a drop of this... Actually, let me drink a bit right now, just to make sure I’m all topped off.”

I stuck out my tongue, uncorked the thing, and tilted it just above my mouth and carefully tried to let a drop of it land my tongue. The moment it finally dropped, I tilted the thing back up and felt as it landed on my tongue.

I immediately felt a massive surge of energy through my entire body and gasped in delight... But then it kept going, getting more and more intense and I soon felt like I was drowning in energy. At some point, I must have collapsed and convulsed on the floor because of the intensity.

When I came to, chat was shouting at me.

JamieWasTaken3: you dumbasssss

GonguuH: that was unwise

SpoOo0oOon: are you okay?!

“Ugh... That was... way too much...”

Now that I thought about it, it had only been the residue of a single drop – what with the effect spreading through the blood and what not – last time, and it had still felt like all the energy in the world. A full drop was apparently way more than I could handle.

“Okay chat, I messed up I think. Good thing no zombies ambushed me while I was out...”

I stood up and noticed that even though the vial had tipped over, nothing had spilled out thanks to the viscosity, so I put the lid back on it and put it back into my pocket.

I stopped and thought about quitting right now and just going to sleep like Spoon had suggested. On one hand, it was probably safer, since I apparently couldn’t help but keep knocking myself out with either the lack of Ether or an overflow of it.

On the other hand, I had way too much energy right now.

“Let’s just keep going until the gate and see what that’s about. Then I’ll turn back.”

Despite the protests of pretty much everyone in the chat, I continued.