Book 6: Chapter 4 - The Grove that Walks (RAW)

Zelenko Arms Model 88 “Warden” Heavy Service Pistol—better known in the gutters as the “Slayer.” Initially issued to Military shock troops, the grav-coil sidearm weighed as much as a sub-gun but earned its keep by driving ferro-ceramic slabs clean through armor or ‘Vader scale. However, disputes over its design led to procurement departments shelving the line for lighter polymesh toys.

No smart-link, no biometric leash—just a metal anchor masquerading as a handgun: untraceable, unstoppable, forever maintenance-hungry. Manuals file it under obsolete. Street surgeons and funeral directors call it revenue. Everyone else just calls it what it is—the last sound you hear when negotiations fail.

- Excerpt from the Grey Markets by Santini Unilezka. 

I waited in a drab room that had all the charm of a prison cell. The furniture was starkly utilitarian—a battered table and a solitary chair, both fashioned from a cold, impersonal metal. A grimy screen dominated one wall, flickering with brutal footage of the ongoing fights, each violent clash accompanied by a tinny cacophony of screams and cheers. Lewd posters of women in provocative poses were crudely pinned to the peeling walls, their faded colors and torn edges making them more grotesque than alluring.

Suddenly, the screen shifted from carnage to portraits, profiles flashing up to announce the next battle of the evening. My own image appeared, expression cold and indifferent, juxtaposed against a monstrous green visage so distorted it barely qualified as human.

"Looks like you're up against Foulgrove," Sol muttered apprehensively, eyes fixed anxiously on the grotesque creature filling the screen.

"It doesn't matter," I replied calmly, leaning casually against a wall slick with grime, my arms folded with deliberate nonchalance. "He'll die like the other one."

Sol chewed nervously on her bottom lip, clearly unconvinced. "That's just it, though—he can't die. He's a Phyto-linked Meta from the Fifth Circle, and his regeneration factor is practically off the charts."

The small communication device crackled sharply in my ear, Casia’s voice dry and clinical. "His powers are indeed formidable—on pure ability, he'd be classified as a Sixth Circle threat, were it not for his limited intellect."

I laughed, a harsh, dismissive sound echoing coldly. "Nevertheless, trash mobs are trash mobs. Perhaps his regeneration factor, or whatever you call it, will prolong the inevitable, but trust me, I will tear him apart faster than he can grow himself back together. I simply have too much burst and sustained damage."

Sol's eyebrows knitted together thoughtfully, curiosity momentarily overcoming fear. "Wait a second... are you like, a gamer?"

Casia's voice cut in with a pointed warning, low and tight: "You probably don’t want to answer that." I could practically feel Sol’s grandmother’s disapproval.

I shrugged carelessly. "I have been known to dabble," I answered blithely..

Her eyes suddenly lit up, excitement overtaking caution. "So... you must know Eidolon Shards, Hollowsgate, Crownsfall—or maybe Syncrosia…" Her voice sped up, rapidly firing out a series of names, each more foreign and baffling than the last.

"No, Solarin," I snapped sharply, irritation flaring as I interrupted her eager rambling. "I do not."

"Oh," she said softly, visibly deflating, eyes downcast with disappointment.

Before the awkward silence could fully settle, the screen’s speakers chimed sharply, pulling my attention back to reality. Instructions flashed urgently across the display, demanding my return to the arena floor—to bloodshed, violence, and spectacle.

Fine by me. It was a welcome escape from Sol's relentless chatter. I pushed away from the wall, rolling my shoulders and flexing my fingers, readying myself for my next battle.

“Come, Solarin. It is time you witness the next part of my saga.”

***

The blast doors yawned open with a snarl of protesting metal. Instead of blackened sand and old ruins, I strode into a lush meadow, eerie in its idyllic nature. Thick emerald blades bowed beneath my armored heels; pockets of purple heath and tiger-striped heather clustered like bruises in the grass. A crystalline stream glittered under false daylight, its current whispering over polished stones—stage-dressing for the violence to come. The arena’s luminescence had been cranked up, bleaching every color into something too vivid, too alive. Theater, I snarled inwardly.

A hundred meters out, squatted my opponent, looking like a green hill in miniature. Foulgrove resembled a rotten tree stump that had somehow crawled out of the mulch and bred with a silverback gorilla. Long arms, knotted with burl and sinew, dragged in rivulets through the grass; his legs were laughably stunted, yet each step churned divots into the green carpet. Vines pulsed beneath bark-plated skin, leaves unfurling across his torso in twitching waves. He was a grotesque parody of life—an overgrown cancer that had traded away every trace of humanity.

I realized I had spat those thoughts aloud the moment Casia’s voice buzzed in my ear. “Metas are born that way. Most are hated by their birth mothers and die before they can crawl. His regen factor’s probably the only reason he’s breathing.”

“Am I supposed to mourn the beast I’m here to put down?” I growled, eyes never leaving the lumbering mass of living green.

“Probably not,” she sighed. “Just figured you deserved the footnote.”

It would be a mercy to snuff out his wretched existence, I told myself with a shiver of pleasure—­and right then, the earth erupted. Vines burst up in a jade explosion, lashing around my arms and torso with the relentless, deliberate strength of ancient roots.

The arena thundered with bloodlust. They screamed for my death, a ragged choir fouling the air with their need. I would oblige them, but the sacrifice would be Foulgrove’s life, not mine.

I waited, unmoved, as Foulgrove lumbered closer. Everywhere his massive feet landed, riots of bright flowers and newborn shoots sprang up, as though some eastern deity traipsed across a sacred meadow. That insult—life spawned from nothing—clashed with everything I was, everything that was the concept that I represented. It mocked logic itself.

The vines cinched tighter, bark cracking as they strained to hold me. I let them. I had reserved something exquisitely unpleasant for this upstart would-be avatar of nature.

Unaware, he plodded into the reach of my Entropic abilities. Laughing at the nature of this vicious world, I triggered an Overboosted Improved Entropic Aura, lacing it with the filaments and threads of another spell—Decay. The spell on Overboost took ten precious points from my Maximum Mana, but the increased debilitating power of it more than justified the cost.

Not mere ripples of invisible grey—­a roiling tempest of entropy exploded outward. The grass browned, then blackened almost instantly. Vines blackened, went brittle, and snapped. The air reeked of centuries collapsing in a heartbeat. All the glory of nature’s vigor bowed before the curse of endless years.

Rot and ruin billowed around me, thick as smoke.

Foulgrove, his brain probably consisting more of chlorophyll than cerebrum, did not even notice. Bellowing like a green bull, the Meta charged.

New vines whipped from his flesh, swollen with the blessings of raw life. So saturated were they that they resisted the tide of entropy and caught me off guard.

My Mimic Shield tried to flare in defence, but it was too soon to display this ace that I held. A growth of wood the size of an oak trunk slammed into me, hurling my body nearly twenty paces. Bone-deep shock tore through my ribs; the hit took a truly massive three hundred and forty-eight points from my Health.

I had underestimated him and paid dearly; naturally, this cursed game seemed to scale every foe to my growing power.

You have gained 1 Constitution

Silver linings: the blow had flung me free of the strangling vines, and the Constitution point was an added bonus. Foulgrove stared, slack-jawed, screeching in confusion that I yet breathed.

Something was wrong with my right arm, and it hung limply to my side, dislocated. My Mana was running low, but I needed to fix my broken limb. I tried to force a Heal, but with my heavy armor and lost in the throes of my Improved Entropic Aura, it was slow in coming to my call.

He answered the affront of my survival with a storm of living trees. Trunks thrust sideways like titanic spears of the forest. I wove between them with Improved Dash, boots skidding over churned turf while I continued to try to invoke the spell.

Above, the mob howled for greater carnage, but finally, Heal answered my summons, and its golden warmth knit torn sinew and snapped the joint back into its socket.

It was high time to oblige the good folk watching above. Drawing the blades at my side would have trivialized the encounter. And, this creature did not deserve their hymns of steel. Not to mention that there is a particular satisfaction in beating a monster to death with one’s bare hands.

Resource management first. I laughed—an ugly, cracked sound—and invoked Greater Drain. I recognized now that its invocation and casting were not so much constructing a spellform as it was tearing a seam in this reality. Hungry tendrils of void sought Foulgrove, but unlike me, he could not evade their lust. The tentacles of ebon midnight clutched him close, and life poured into me, electric and intoxicating, setting my nerves ablaze as I sprinted in great, eager strides to strike his face.

He conjured a barricade of bark and thorns—more a grove than a simple barrier. This I smashed with an Entropic Strike. Black fissures spider-webbed through the wood, cells surrendering to pure death.

The trick to dealing with creatures in games that had regeneration was inflicting status effects. And, what better status effect to inflict than the raw stuff of Entropy itself? My own Health climbed even as his vitality bled away.

“Allow me to free you from this pitiful existence,” I hissed, hands curling into claws. I raked furrows through his mossy hide. He swung, but I shredded his fists, drawing a strangled roar—he healed fast, yet pain still ruled him.

“DIE! DIE!” I roared back, a savage kick caving in his knee. He toppled like a felled cedar.

More vines groped for me from the ground, but Entropy was strong now in this realm; they withered before touching skin. The stench had turned absolute—a final, irrevocable rot.

My armored Adamantine fingers quested deeper, ripping chunks from his torso. He was slow, confused, doomed.

The crowd fell into horrified silence as I worked. Bit by bit, I reduced the abomination to literal pulp, refusing to stop until the glittering words of triumph flashed across my vision.

You have slain a Meta-human. 357 experience gained.

How wonderful, I thought to myself. A few more like him, and I would find myself levelling up. For the second time, I took a moment to appreciate my good fortune at finding this place.

***

Sol was helping me clean off the worst of the general gunk and green viscera from my armor when a band of three men walked in. Each wore a slab-black weapon at his hip—rough, utilitarian things that oozed the promise of loud, brutal death. I recognized them from my previous life, but the name danced just beyond memory, like a fish slipping through reeds.

Sol froze, rag half-lifted, terror flashing in her eyes. I greeted the intruders with a low, venomous hiss.

“The Boss wants to speak to you,” said their leader—a wolf-lean man whose black visor swallowed his eyes.

“Knock,” I growled, voice scraping the air, “and try again once you have learned manners.”

He curled his lip. “Or what?”

“Or I will tear you apart, squealing, limb from limb.” I shrugged. “Entirely your choice; I am happy either way and will respect your decision.”

As one, the trio’s hands drifted instinctively toward their weapons.

“Let me instruct you once more,” I said, slow as dripping pitch. “Knock. Then enter. Be polite and careful with your words. You’ve just watched an ‘unaugmented human’ dismantle a Meta; you’ll find taking you three apart scarcely a warm-up.”

Some people survive infancy by sheer cosmic accident. The black visored man belonged to that unfortunate category.

His face turned a furious shade of crimson. “Who the hell do you think you are?”

Overhead, the ceiling camera whirred, lens tightening on me. Visor-man tapped the comm in his ear; whatever he heard stopped him cold, as though some small god had whispered in his skull.

“The Boss—Voss—cordially invites you—” he began weakly.

“I said knock, then try again. Three… two…”

They shuffled out like chastened dogs, door clicking shut. A few moments later, there was a polite knock.

“Much better,” I purred as they re-entered. “Now, lay your toys on the table so we can converse like adults.”

Truth be told, pressing him until he snapped would only simplify my evening; I could fight more Metas and Augmented humans or I could fight more Metas and Augmented humans and all the other goons here. What I would lose from the prize money, I could recoup from looting their corpses. Their corpses, I was sure which would yield valuable trinkets. But… therein lay the problem, I would have to spend a considerable amount of time looting.

He must have read those thoughts behind my eyes. Color drained from his cheeks. One curt bark later, and all three holstered weapons clacked onto the metal tabletop.

I bared my teeth in something almost like a smile. “Excellent. It appears you can be taught after all.”