The Forerunner: A GameLit Progression Fantasy, page 25
“If I can’t handle seeing it, I’m certainly not going to be able to do it," she responded.
“True, but I wasn’t planning on starting you off with something this deep. I was just planning on doing your skin and exposed muscle groups.”
“I’m a big girl. I’ll be alright.”
“Okay, you asked for it," he said with a grin. He was dressed in a pair of shorts, something that he had custom made as they didn’t appear to be a thing in this world. This may be his last pair, as Laurel considered them to be rather vulgar. For this job, though, they were the only way he could maintain his decency in front of her.
Sitting in the tub Zed pulled out the knife that he received from Victoria and sliced the entire length of his shin. He hissed and said, “Okay, do the ant acid!”
With a slight tremble, Laurel poured the acid on his shin bone. It, and the flesh around it, bubbled and hissed and spat out fumes as it turned into a liquid. Zed clenched the sides of the tub and held on, gritting his teeth through the pain.
He glanced up at Laurel to see how she was doing. She looked a little green, but she was a trooper. He motioned to have her pour a little more acid over the ends of the bone.
Once it was all liquified, Zed said through gritted teeth, “Water!" She poured the previously prepared barrel of water into the tub to dilute the acid. The diluted acid spread everywhere in the tub, but his tempered skin resisted it.
Unfortunately, the shorts did not.
“Um, well… uh, wow," he heard from his fiancée. She blushed with embarrassment as she looked down into the tub. When she noticed Zed looking at her, she went even redder and turned around, mortified.
Zed looked down and saw that his shorts had become tattered in all the wrong places, giving his fiancée an unexpected view.
“Uh, sorry about that.”
“No, my fault. I shouldn’t have looked.”
“How about we consider this a story we’ll laugh about in a month, but for now pretend it never happened?”
“I quite agree," she nodded.
And so it was decided that Laurel would not be his body tempering assistant for the time being.
**
After his flesh had reformed, pristine and flawless, Zed cleaned himself up, dressed, and joined Dan and Laurel in the kitchen. He was always famished after regeneration.
Laurel, intrigued by the body tempering, asked, “So the point of the tempering is to dissolve the flesh, right?”
“Right.”
“The pain is just an unfortunate byproduct of the dissolving?”
“Yes. If it’s too much for you I comp…”
“No, no, that’s not what I’m getting at. My point is, why don’t you use a painkiller?”
Zed was stunned and wanted to curse. Dan just laughed.
“Um," he said sheepishly, “because I didn’t know this world had any, and I didn’t think of it?”
Laurel rolled her eyes and said, “Men.”
Chapter 32
The body tempering sessions were significantly less painful after that. The painkillers were not as effective as what was available on Earth, but they were a whole lot better than what he’d been using before, which was nothing. With his increased bodily toughness and being accustomed to pain, the tempering became almost easy.
Easy, that is, until he got to the last thing he wanted to temper—his heart and lungs. Which, you know, could kill him.
‘Are you sure that this is a good idea, Zed?" Iris asked.
‘No.’
‘Then why are you doing it?’
‘Because to succeed I’m going to have to take risks, and because I think there will be a big payoff for doing it.’
Before Laurel left the room, she looked at him with concerned eyes and asked, “Are you sure that this is a good idea, Zed?”
He sighed. “Yes.”
“I love you," she said, and kissed him on the lips.
“I love you too," he said as she turned away and left.
In preparation for this moment, Zed increased his regeneration mana flows until most of it was being used for regeneration. He would’ve added even more but he felt like his body was stuffed and overflowing with mana, and he wasn’t sure what would happen if he added more. He tested the regeneration by cutting the skin on his arm. He watched it restitch itself in moments.
“Alright, let’s do this," he said to Dan. Zed undressed himself and climbed into the tub. After taking the painkiller he nodded to Dan, who quickly sliced his chest and, before it could close up again, poured in the acid.
Zed didn’t feel the need to yell in pain in his slightly stoned state, so he quietly observed with his inner eye what was happening. The ribs and sternum resisted the acid, but the acid quickly dissolved the tissues between the ribs and flowed into the chest cavity. From there, the acid attacked the heart and lungs. The lungs in particular were destroyed quickly as they were mostly air.
‘Huh, I can’t breathe. That sucks. I wonder when that’s going to change.'
That’s when Dan poured in more acid.
‘Oh, right, we have to dissolve it all. I won’t be able to breathe or have blood flowing at all for… how long? Maybe this wasn’t a good idea.’
While he was staying more-or-less calm, part of him was screaming, furious that he wasn’t fighting to build his body back. That part finally got through to his conscious brain.
‘Let’s try and add more mana.' Even though his regeneration flows were “full," Zed added more. Blood vessels and muscle fibers all over his body burst, but the damage was not too bad because most of the regeneration mana was in his chest cavity working on rebuilding the missing lungs and heart.
At that moment gallons of water were poured into his chest, diluting the acid dramatically. It still ate away at his flesh, but at a much lower rate. His regeneration finally started winning the battle.
Zed “saw” the mana taking the dissolved molecules of his body that were floating in the murky sea of his chest and putting them together frantically. The lung air sacs were growing quickly, and the heart muscle was reforming, but it seemed like there was just so much farther to go.
Gradually he just became tired, and closed his inner eye so he could rest…
**
He drifted for what seemed like an eternity. Through the dark. No, not the dark. Through… he didn’t have language to describe it. Maybe “nothingness," or “unformed reality” was better. He didn’t know.
He was at peace so he didn’t mind the aloneness. Eventually he noticed a very dim, almost invisible, slender tether that snaked off into the distance. He decided out of curiosity to see what was on the other end, so he pulled it, hand over hand. After yet more eternities he came upon a woman. A green woman with tusks who sat cross-legged and appeared to be meditating.
Her eyes snapped open and saw him.
“Zed.”
‘Is that me?’ he wondered.
“Something has gone wrong if you’re here. Did you die already? I had hoped that you would make it through.”
She looked into and through him, and she widened her eyes in surprise. “That was both bold and incredibly stupid, Zed. Mostly stupid. You’re on the precipice now. Okay, more like 90% over the precipice, but with a shove I can send you back. Do you want to go back?”
Did he want to go back? He wasn’t sure. He didn’t even know what “back” meant, really. But… he had a feeling that he was needed elsewhere. That something was undone. So he nodded his head and said, “Back.”
“Okay, but I’m not going to do this again, Zed, so stop doing stupid stuff. I can see now why the Buddhists talk about cutting their ties to karma—fewer hassles that way. Off you go." She poked him in the chest. He felt like he traveled through the unreality that had taken him eons in a split-second, slamming back into his body.
“Zed!" a voice screamed. “Come on, buddy, stay with me! Zed!" He felt rhythmic pumps on his chest. The chest pumps finally kick started the muscle in his chest that was there but didn’t know what to do. His blood started sluggishly moving, and he drew in a breath for the first time in… forever.
He gasped and started coughing.
“Oh, thank God!" The chest thumping stopped and he was left to his own devices for the moment. Once his coughing stopped he drew in a deep breath and opened his eyes. His bleary eyes saw Dan, who looked exhausted, and Laurel, who had obviously been crying for a while. She came to his side and started to hug him, and then thought better of it when she realized she might impede his breathing.
“Thank the goddess, Zed. You scared me so badly… don’t do that again!" she cried.
“I… might… have to… I think I… missed a spot," he said in between breaths.
She looked at him in incredulity, and when she realized that he was joking she looked infuriated and shouted, “You dummy!" while pummeling him in the chest, apparently forgetting that his heart had only recently started beating again. Or deciding that it was worth it.
Zed laughed weakly and turned his head to look at Dan. “Thanks for doing the CPR.”
Dan looked both tired and a little teary. “No problem. I know you’d do the same for me.”
Zed nodded and turned back to Laurel. “I’m sorry. I was stupid.”
She nodded and hugged him around the neck, crying.
Zed whispered, “I love you," while he stroked the back of her head.
“Now let me get some pants on.”
Chapter 33
After Zed had gotten dressed and spent time with Dan and Laurel to reassure them that he was back for good, he took the time to look at his status. He hoped that all of the drama was worth it.
“Holy …" Zed whispered. He had been transformed. The physical gains were massive, but likely just as important—if not more important—were the radically improved mana limits on his abilities. Between that and being able to use multiple mana abilities at once, accumulating more mana was once again important for his progress.
First though, it was time to earn some money.
**
Laurel accompanied Zed to the fighters’ dressing room. She was worried but doing her best not to show it. Zed, unfortunately, had mental enhancements that let him read the subtle signs of her anxiety.
“Don’t worry, love. Even if I lose, I won’t really lose anything besides a little time. I’m not even putting up the initial 10,000 gold.”
“As long as you don’t die.”
“As you saw, I don’t go down that easily," he said with a smile.
She teared up at the memory, but nodded her head.
Turning inward, Zed went over his game plan in his mind.
‘200 mana for regeneration—for such a long fight I’ll need the extra rejuvenation. With the mental enhancements at 100 that leaves 543 mana for everything else. The skills I’ll be using are physical enhancement (max 100), sensor field for group fights (max 150, though I shouldn’t need to max it out), and mass shifting (max 450). There isn’t enough to max everything out, but it’s pretty close.’
Zed gave Iris’ ring to Laurel. There was lots of food and water in it that he would need in between fights to fuel his regeneration. He didn’t want people to see him pulling items out of thin air—he had enough enemies as it was—so he gave it to Laurel so she could pull the food out behind the scenes.
‘100 challengers. I need to take them out quickly. One minute per challenger is almost two hours of fighting. It would be better if I could do it faster, at least for the weaker ones.’
He then had a stray thought. ‘I wonder if challenger 93 knew what was going on, or if they were just going to bet on his fight?' He shook off the thought and focused on his mental preparation. Soon he was in his “fight mode”, ready to win at all costs.
Before long he was called up to the pit. He ignored the lengthy, exaggerated introduction. Once it was over and before the first challenger was introduced, he held up his fist to indicate that he had something to say. The announcer paused, unsure what was going on.
Zed let the silence remain for a couple of seconds to get the crowd’s attention. This was a bit of theater, because as a leader he knew that his image mattered, and something he wanted to do.
“I dedicate this victory to the Greeks at Thermopylae.”
He then lowered his fist and was still. The crowd buzzed, unsure what to make of it. They didn’t know what a Greek was, or Thermopylae, but they did know what “victory” meant. He heard the occasional voice say “presumptuous!” or “arrogant!”. Zed just suppressed his grin.
They didn’t know that the Zed of a month ago was not the Zed of today. He had been reborn. In an odd mood, he thought of a verse that wasn’t meant for his situation, but perhaps it was appropriate anyway.
‘For I will take you from among the heathen, and gather you out of all countries, and will bring you into your own land. Then will I sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall be clean: from all your filthiness, and from all your idols, will I cleanse you. A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh… And ye shall dwell in the land that I gave to your fathers; and ye shall be my people, and I will be your God.’
He crossed himself and looked up and saw his first opponent—a young álfar who was obviously nervous and trying not to show it. It was time to fight.
He needed to end things quickly and couldn’t afford to take the time to gauge each opponent. Besides, between the change in his physical attributes and the speed and capacity of his mana flows, he was almost an order of magnitude faster than he had been. Most opponents would simply not be able to keep up with him, so he turned on his physical enhancements and super speed and simply ran up to the álfar. He probably looked like a blur to his opponent and the audience. He punched his opponent in the chest. He purposely pulled his punch because he did not want to kill or seriously hurt anyone unless he had to. Still, he saw the compression waves in the álfar’s chest spread to the rest of his body as he flew back and slammed into the pit wall. He rebounded off of the wall and dropped to the ground, face first and unmoving.
“Winner—Zed ‘The Dominator’!”
Zed was under no illusions that all of his fights would be this easy. He would get tired, no matter how much he cranked the regeneration up.
‘I’ll bet that schmuck Augustin put the weaker challengers at the beginning of the lineup,’ Zed thought, somewhat cynically. ‘His dream is probably to have it get to challenger #100. At that point he wouldn’t even care who won, as long as he got his percentage of all the bets. So I should take care of the easy meat quickly, and preserve my stamina for the later, tougher fights.’
As he fought he started singing a Greek war song in his mind.
‘Sons of the Greeks, arise!
(a dwarf collapsed, bleeding from the temple)
The glorious hour’s gone forth.
(an álfar crumpled after a brutal kidney shot)
And, worthy of such ties,
(an álfar fell, unconscious from a forward head kick)
Display who gave us birth.’
(a human surrendered after being kneed in the gut)
In between fights Zed sometimes ate something or took a quick drink of water that Laurel brought out. The other times he sat down, closed his eyes, and meditated.
‘Sons of Greeks! Let us go
(an ogrum bellowed from a broken leg, and surrendered)
In arms against the foe.
(an álfar collapsed after being head-butted)
Till their hated blood shall flow
(an álfar is slammed into the pit wall, and falls)
In a river past our feet.’
(a dwarf is knocked unconscious by an ax kick)
The fights started to be… not a blur exactly, but he was so in the zone that Zed’s equilibrium was never shaken, even when he took damage, which was starting to happen more often. It was almost like he was watching himself fight, as his body and mind synchronized and he simply knew what to do without thinking.
‘Then manfully despising
(an álfar went flying, blood pouring from his nose)
The Turkish tyrant’s yoke,
(an ogrum faceplanted, insensate)
Let your country see you rising,
(the last álfar of a group of three dropped)
And all her chains are broke.
(...a spray of blood flying…)
Brave shades of chiefs and sages,
(...a nose caving in…)
Behold the coming strife!
(...the crunch of broken bone…)
Hellenes of past ages,
Oh, start again to life!
At the sound of my trumpet, breaking
Your sleep, oh, join with me!
And the seven-hill’d city seeking,
Fight, conquer, till we’re free.’
Zed asked Laurel what challenger was next as she handed him some water.
“Number 78.”
“Tell me when I’m about to face number 93.”
“Okay.”
‘Sons of Greeks! Let us go
In arms against the foe.
Till their hated blood shall flow
In a river past our feet.’
‘Sparta, Sparta, why in slumbers
Lethargic dost thou lie?
Awake, and join thy numbers
With Athens, old ally!
Leonidas recalling,
That chief of ancient song
Who saved ye once from falling.’
“Number 93 is next, Zed.”
Zed awoke from his semi-trance. “Okay, thanks.”
“Are you going to be okay?”
Zed noticed the worry in her voice. He nodded and said, “I’ll be fine." He had many fading bruises and a repaired broken collarbone. He had had to stall and increase his regeneration to get through that, but he had made it. He was weary though. Very weary. He just wanted to lie down and sleep for a long time.
‘Give me the rundown of how the fights have been going, Iris.’
