Malphegor

PIG Ch. 28

"Huh? You're telling me you can't make this thing any smaller?"

Marco stared miserably at the half-palm-sized recorder in his hand, then glanced at his colleague in the tech department.

"Steven, you're the most capable tech guy in the precinct. You must have some way, right?"

"Cut the flattery. You know I'm just the precinct te...

PIG Ch. 27

Riiiiip!

The paper bag split cleanly in half. Marco pulled out a glass bottle with a red label and set it on the equipment division's beat-up workbench.

"I don't really drink. You guys want some grappa?"

"No. We don't touch that stuff in the morning."

At the entrance of the converted workshop deep inside the unde...

PIG Ch. 26

Marco floored the gas pedal and sped back to the precinct.

As expected, the building was still brightly lit. When he stepped into the lobby, he found that none of the veteran detectives had managed to escape, every one of them sat slumped in their chairs, pretending to study the files in front of them. Even the back-office staff were carry...

PIG Ch. 25

On the way back, Alan sat in the passenger seat while Anna sat in the back watching the kids. The patrol car sped off the Narrows and pulled up beside the gleaming golden arches of a McDonald's in the Burnley District.

"Here." Marco pulled out a twenty-dollar bill and handed it to Alan. "Go in and get something to eat. You can get the toys...

PIG Ch. 24

What should he eat for lunch?

It was a harder question than it should've been.

By the time Marco walked out of Bob's office, it was already past noon. He had more than ten grand sitting in his bank account, technically, he should treat himself to something decent. But once taxes kicked in, that ten thousand would shrink to maybe six....

PIG Ch. 23

"Beautifully done!"

Bob couldn't stop grinning the entire ride back. The moment they stepped into his office, he cut a cigar, lit it, and took a long drag.

"That bastard." He jabbed the air with the hand holding the cigar, as if poking an invisible enemy. "Falcone, that cunning son of a bitch, every time there's money on the table, h...

PIG Ch. 22

Swoverld stared at the cooperation order spread flat across his desk, then looked up at the GCPD officer standing in front of him, this recent name that kept popping up in departmental briefings, and felt his temples start to throb.

The official story fed to the public was that the police had taken down a terrorist cell planning an attack ...

PIG Ch. 21

The exhaust pipe let out one last puff of black smoke like a dying sigh. With a harsh clattering screech as the gears jammed, the G20 finally gave up and died on the road.

This was within expectations. Marco dialed the precinct's tow truck number, glanced around, and planned to find a store to buy cigarettes, otherwise there'd be trouble w...

PIG Ch. 20

The cold wind in Gotham's western suburbs swept through the bare hedgerows. Marco pulled his gaze from the distant spire of Wayne Tower piercing the clouds and looked at the faded, worn letters on the sign beside the gravel path.

Private Property...

He'd assumed that with Falcone's status, the estate would be some Gatsby-level mansio...

PIG Ch. 19

The fountain pen scratched across paper, leaving behind a beautifully written cursive signature.

Oswald Chesterfield Cobblepot.

Cobblepot and Bob stood together in the lobby of the East End Precinct, raising the donation contract for the reporters and officers present to see. Camera flashes fired in rapid succession and enthusiastic ...

MPCW Ch. 10

The spider never got its hoped-for survival scenario.

The moment it landed in that boat, its fate was sealed tighter than a jar of pickles in a Russian grandmother's pantry.

Alexei stood over the corpse, staring at the mess he'd made. Thirty-plus holes punched clean through chitin and meat, dark ichor pooling underneath, the whole th...

MPCW Ch. 09

The third wolf corpse was a problem.

Not just because Alexei didn't have enough XP to assimilate it, but because leaving a fresh corpse sitting around was asking for trouble.

Even someone who'd never set foot in wilderness knew the rule: blood attracts predators. He'd read enough survival stories, both the realistic kind and the wild...

MPCW Ch. 08

Somewhere deep in a forest that definitely wasn't on any map. Okay, that was obviously a lie, there was a map.

Anyway, it was past midnight, day six.

Alexei reeled in his line as a handful of experience orbs flowed into him, pushing his level back up to 1.

He immediately spent it.

His level dropped to zero, and in front o...

MPCW Ch. 07

After cleaning up the claw marks and wood chips scattered around the back of his treehouse, Alexei finally went inside to tally his gains from the all-night fishing marathon.

One night. 113 experience points total.

Going from level 0 to level 1 only required 7 XP. With some quick math and conversions, he now had sixteen extra blocks ...

MPCW Ch. 06

The bobber floated on the surface of his infinite water source, rising and falling with subtle ripples.

Alexei stared at it without blinking, his eyes starting to water from the effort.

In the game, fish would create visible splash effects as they approached the bobber. You'd see the particles, get a warning, know something was about...

MPCW Ch. 05

Day three of being stuck in a fantasy death-forest, and Alexei woke up on a hard wooden floor.

His hunger bar was still full, since he'd respawned and immediately passed out last night without bothering to do anything productive.

He dug open the entrance to his treehouse and was greeted by an unusually early morning. The sky was just...

MPCW Ch. 04

Alexei was a man on a mission. Well, a teenager on a mission. The point was, he had a goal: sleep in a bed tonight instead of on a hard ground like some kind of medieval peasant.

Time was ticking, and he wasn't about to waste it.

He sprinted back to his treehouse, grabbed materials from his floor-pile of hoarded items, and quickly cr...

MPCW Ch. 03

The third time Alexei respawned at his spawn point, staring at his empty inventory and completely reset state, he made an executive decision: fuck the spider.

Not literally. God, no. He meant strategically.

"I'm not running away," he told the forest, which didn't care about him. "There's a difference. A tactical retreat to gather bet...

MPCW Ch. 02

As the last drops of life drained out of him, Alexei felt something grab hold of his consciousness, an invisible force that yanked his soul out of his dying body like someone ripping a plant out of the ground, roots and all.

The sensation was deeply wrong.

"I just died?"

Even as his soul fully separated from his corpse, floatin...

MPCW Ch. 01

This is more of a test. If you kind of enjoy it, let me know, so I can decide whether to continue.

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Morning sunlight filtered through a canopy so thick it could've housed a small city, scattering broken patches of light across the ground that reeked of decomposition and way too much nature for Alexei Volkov...

PIG Ch. 18

Marco carried a jar of brodo up to the third floor of Gotham General, whistling softly under his breath. Behind the old CRT monitor at the nurses' station, a middle-aged nurse leaned out.

"Morning, Marco. What'd you make this time? More of Italian rice balls?"

By the second night of his hospitalization, the after-effects of the flash...

PIG Ch. 17

Clang... clang... clank...

The Chevy's door was jammed. Marco yanked on it three times before it finally gave way. Inside, Darnell was slumped in the passenger seat, one hand loosely gripping his Glock, barrel pointed at the floor. He wasn't moving.

"Don't tell me your own stupidity finally killed you."

He scrambled in...

PIG Ch. 16

The roar of an engine came from behind them, the direction they'd originally come from. Marco's head snapped around just in time to see a Dodge pickup barreling down the street, its bed modified with a welded tripod mount. Sitting on that mount, like something out of a third-world war zone, was a PKM machine gun. Several gang members armed with ...

PIG Ch. 15

I'm a second-class officer of the Gotham Police Department, not some goddamn superhero. When trouble hits, you call for backup. What am I supposed to do, handle it alone?

Marco had just shut the car door when a tearing screech, followed by the heavy thunk-thunk-thunk of bullets hammering metal. The van rattled loudly. But most of ...

PIG Ch. 14

The van belched black smoke as it shot out of the East End precinct parking lot. Three Toyota Crowns followed behind, heading toward the highway.

Darnell gripped the steering wheel absent-mindedly, glancing at his partner. He hesitated, then finally couldn't help asking, "Did that guy make some excessive demand? Why do you look so preoccup...

PIG Ch. 13

Alvarez walked over with two men, his face completely blank. One was Cuevas, the leather-clad carjacker with shoulders like a linebacker. The other was the chronically unlucky demolition expert, Ian Hagrove.

"Hey, this guy looks like he's about to piss himself." Darnell waved at Hagrove. His expression was hard to read, but legs wouldn't s...

PIG Ch. 12

This life was getting impossible to live.

He'd woken up that morning feeling like he could take on the world. After all, he'd just gotten back from Metropolis yesterday, called the landlord and finally got the heating fixed, and then, right before bed, the system had hit him with a message:

[You have altered the fate of Waylon Jones ...

PIG Ch. 11

After leaving the precinct, Marco didn't waste a second. He drove straight to the slums, practically dragged Waylon out of that rotting apartment, and hit the gas before anyone could ask questions.

The seats and suspension on the Chevy G20 were absolute garbage, at least on this particular van. Even cruising along the smooth Bay Ring Road,...

PIG Ch. 10

"Ugh... fuck... fuck..."

Marco slapped one hand over his face and let out a string of groans while the other fumbled blindly across the nightstand. His fingers finally closed around the phone that was blaring like a car alarm, and he angrily jabbed the screen to hang up. Less than ten seconds later, the ringing started again.

"FUCK! ...

PIG Ch. 09

"Four boxes of ammo, two hours of range time. Fifty-eight dollars."

Marco pulled out a few crumpled bills and slid them across the counter. The range cashier took the money without looking up, tapped at the register with grease-stained fingers, and the machine spat out a slightly blurred receipt that looked like it had been printed sometim...