Chapter Two-Hundred-and-Forty-Two

When Adam entered his player house, he immediately went over to the weapon saving chest, just to make sure Parvillo had actually done what he’d asked.

< < Weapon Saving Activated > >

< 2 items >

< Tainted Bulwark (Rare) >

< Defender (Common) >

Might be worth upgrading the weapon saving and bringing back a different weapon than Defender to my next loop, he mused.

But I shouldn’t get ahead of myself just yet. There’s no telling how far I might be able to make it this time.

Despite using the Fool, he thought that he’d be able to leverage his knowledge to reach stage nine again. After all, none of the stages except Moonport required a boss to be defeated to finish the stage, and for the Patriarch, he knew it’d be possible to use holy relics to defeat him, even if it might be a long-winded affair.

I may end up having to rely a lot on my teammates again though, and that’s always a dubious prospect.

He was about to go down the steps to the restaurant below, when he decided to get a proper look at himself. When he’d worn the slime king’s crown in his fifth loop, he’d been in too much of a hurry to see Emelia again that he hadn’t taken the time to fully appreciate his transformation. He’d seen what it looked like on a guy named Sven back during his third loop, but it hadn’t been completely clear how it worked, since the guy had been a hologram in the tavern.

With a mental nudge, a mirror appeared in front of him.

Atop Adam’s head sat the crown, which unlike the slime king’s version wasn’t rusted but instead golden. His facial features were completely gone, but his head had the outline of hair. Inside his body floated five grey spherical stones, each of them moving around at random.

I think my skeleton should still be intact, since slime only dissolves organic matter like flesh, but I don’t see any bones.

Since his body was made of a milky-white slime substance, it wasn’t transparent but rather quite opaque. Strangely, this didn’t stop the cores from being visible, even though they were deep inside his body.

I guess it would be kind of unfair if my cores were impossible to see.

Although Finnian looked very slime-like in his humanoid shape, Adam felt that he just looked more like a white shadow of himself, though the pendant around his neck, the stone hand on his left arm, the lucky bracelet around his right wrist, and the shapeshifter’s claw on his right hand all helped to make him appear more human, since without those the flat colour of his body might make him appear almost two-dimensional.

“I still have bones inside my body, right?” Adam asked Parvillo.

[Yes.]

“So, if I take off the crown, I’ll turn into a skeleton until the island heals me?”

[It is supposed to be possible for a Player to survive, but I would not recommend it.]

“Right…”

Adam poked his left arm with the shapeshifter’s claw, feeling about for any bones. After a bit of prodding, he thought he could feel the humerus bone in his upper arm, but it shifted around under the pressure, making him certain it wasn’t connected to the rest of his skeleton.

Shit. Is my body just a bag of jelly with bones floating around inside it now?

How the hell am I supposed to survive taking off the crown if none of my bones are connected??

With the slime gloves, his finger bones had been attached like normal, but when he looked at his reflection again, he realised that his overall size had increased slightly, and that, along with the fibres, muscles, flesh, and sinew all dissolving in the acid, meant that there was nothing to really keep his skeleton connected.

I bet the cores shifting around also aren’t helping…

He focused on the way the cores moved and after a bit of concentrated staring at his own reflection, he was able to stop them all in place and manipulate them around his body. He shifted one down through his left arm, and the way it moved through his body unimpeded, made him think the cores were phasing through his bones completely, which was a small consolation, even if it didn’t make a lot of sense.

Since he didn’t have any facial features, Adam moved two of the cores up into his head to serve as placeholders for eyes and then he placed the three remaining ones below like a primitive smile.

The end result was… kind of horrifying, in a creepypasta sort of way.

Fuck it. Good enough for now.

I’ll have to find a mask or something though. Otherwise, the group stages won’t go over well.

He went down the steps to the restaurant and Charlie immediately greeted him.

“Would you like something to eat?” she asked him.

“I am not sure how that would be possible,” he replied.

Charlie nodded, not at all put off by the prospect of feeding a slime. “The way I understand slime anatomy, your entire body is a digestive system.”

“Awesome…” Adam deadpanned.

Charlie chuckled in that bubbly way of hers. “What I meant to say is that you should not have any trouble eating, even if the manner of how you eat can be somewhat unorthodox.”

“Then I’ll have some croissants from Jameson’s Bakery, and stone crab claws with mustard sauce.”

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

“Anything to drink?”

Adam stopped short of asking how exactly he’d be able to drink with his slime body and just said, “Ginger ale.”

If she thought anything of Adam’s insane order, Charlie didn’t show it in the slightest as she bounded off to the kitchen.

Adam eyed a nearby stool.

Hopefully the slime emperor’s crown doesn’t make my acidic body more corrosive than the king’s version, he prayed silently as he sat down.

The chair immediately started to sizzle and char under him, but it wasn’t completely consumed by his body, which allowed him to transform it into a proper chair and lean back like he always did.

Players popped up around the tables, but unlike in his previous loop, none of the other seats in his dimension were taken up by the denizens. It felt kind of lonely.

Everyone who appeared looked directly at Adam.

Bet people are confused as hell, he thought with a chuckle. I can’t wait to see how many of my friends are still alive. Maybe it’s all of them, given how many survived stage one.

But first, I’ve gotta figure out who I might be up against here.

“Show me this world’s time-looper,” he said.

Nothing happened.

“Is there no time-looper in this universe?” he asked Parvillo, confused.

[Besides yourself, no.]

That was not a comforting thought.

“Then how is this universe still here? Shouldn’t it end if there’s no one left to loop?”

Before Parvillo could answer, someone called Adam’s name.

He immediately turned at the sound of her voice.

It was Emelia.

His heart skipped a beat, before confusion settled in.

“How do you know my name?” he asked her.

“Of course I know your name,” she replied, a smile on her face.

He met her eyes and recoiled slightly at what he saw.

Emelia’s pupils were like pinpricks, and the sclerae of her eyes were red. She looked anaemic and pale, despite normally having a slightly golden skin tone. She was gripping the tabletop in front of her with a lot of strength and there were black sigils on her hands. The smile on her face was forced and didn’t reach her eyes.

It looked like she was in pain.

“She wants you to come back, Adam,” Emelia said.

Tears rolled down her face.

“Please, Adam. I don’t know what you did, but you have to go back.”

“Is she hurting you?” he asked her, horrified at whatever was happening.

“She wants you to know that she is proud of you,” Emelia went on. “You managed to betray her. But it is time to go back.”

The tears rolling down her face turned pink, then red. She was still smiling as if nothing was wrong.

“Please! Adam! You need to go back!” she pleaded.

“Emelia, what’s happening to you!?” he asked.

Suddenly there was a pop and her face exploded, before she immediately vanished.

“Emelia!” he screamed.

“Adam,” said another voice.

He turned and saw Beck. His pupils were pinpricks too and his skin was pale with beads of sweat running down his forehead.

“You have seen what I can do,” he said, his voice hoarse as though he’d been shouting moments prior. “You can have it all in this universe. Everything you want.”

Blood drippled out of his nostrils, striking the table his hands were holding onto in fat droplets.

“I found this place, just for you, Adam,” Beck said, his face appearing strained.

Then he suddenly slumped over, his forehead hitting the table, before he vanished.

“I can keep going, Adam,” Kat’s voice said from his right.

“I’ll fucking kill you!” Adam shouted at the Flayed Lady puppeteering his friends.

“Kill an Absolute?” Kat replied. She had the same smile as Emelia plastered on her face, but her jaw was clenched too tight, like she was in pain. “I would like to see you try, but we both know you are just a pawn.”

Kat lifted her right hand and tore her nails down her face, tearing open the skin.

“Stop!” Adam yelled at her.

“This entire universe is mine,” Kat said calmly, even as the blood ran down her ruined face and filled her mouth. “All of these people belong to me.”

Kat slid off of her chair and vanished.

“But I would give them to you,” Willow said, appearing directly in front of Adam. She had wounds on her neck, as though she’d been fighting back against the control just a second prior. “This universe is all you ever wanted. I found it just for you.”

Willow disappeared and was replaced with Helena Fischer. “Even the weaklings survived thanks to me,” she said.

Adam’s heart sank at the sight of his sister finally making it past stage one. Unlike the others, she looked untouched. Adam didn’t know if it was a good thing or not.

“You just need my eternal subservience in return, right?” Adam replied, managing to keep his composure, even as everyone he’d known and loved were torn apart in front of him by the sick and twisted Absolute.

“You know that you only made it as far as you did because of me,” Helena said and vanished, being replaced by Gladwyn.

“You could not even beat the champion of Nwetrou without my powers,” Gladwyn added. “And unlike so many of my other adherents, you showed true promise. In time, you could have been great. You would have all you wanted. I would see to that. Power, family, love, friendship. All of it, Adam.”

Gladwyn disappeared and Lasse took his place. “You just need to return to me. Worship me in the altar and I will forgive you.”

Adam turned to Parvillo. “Block everyone I know from contacting me in the tavern.”

[Understood.]

Lasse vanished and no one took his place.

Adam breathed a small sigh of relief, even though his head was spinning and his whole body shook with anger and anxiety.

[Another player is trying to contact you,] Parvillo said. [No, that is not quite correct. It is everyone. Every single player who survived stage one. All of them are trying to speak to you, all at once.]

Adam clenched his hands.

“Block them all. Don’t let any other player contact me.”

[Understood.]

Adam got up from his chair and paced in a circle for a moment, his mind working overtime.

Then he stopped and looked at Parvillo, who floated near his abandoned seat.

“The previous time-looper in this universe was me, right?”

[Yes. That appears to be the case.]

Adam had to steady himself against a wall and take in a deep breath.

The Flayed Lady must have screwed with my dimensional shard and sent me to this universe. Because I was the time-looper here, it means that my arrival now fucks it all up. If I don’t stay here and keep the loops going, she will just let the universe die out.

If I loop again, she will just send me to another universe like this. She probably has an endless number of them to pick from.

“What the fuck do I do?” Adam asked, sinking down to his knees as despair rolled over him. “How do I even fight back against something like this?”

[You do what you must, Adam Fischer. Seek the Chaotic Convergence. I myself do not possess the power to expel this perverse intrusion, but the Chaotic Convergence does. After all, he crafted the shard that is within you and within this vessel of mine. Knowing his disposition, it is likely he will also aid you in seeking revenge against the Flayed Lady.]

Adam nodded, the goal helping him to keep the despair from taking hold. “I will. I’ll make sure the Flayed Lady regrets what she put everyone through.”

Charlie returned with Adam’s food on a tray, but he no longer felt hungry.

He stood up and handed her a vanity mirror. With a sudden flame enveloping her body, she transformed back into a woman with fiery red hair, freckles, two antennae, and orange-red skin and eyes.

“Don’t come back to the tavern,” he told her. “Go to the market or the garden or outside my player house, just don’t stay here.”

“Thank you, Adam,” she said and handed him her fire mage’s glove, although it just slipped out of his hands.

< < Secret Weapon Obtained > >

< Fire Mage’s Glove (Epic) — The glove of a Fiery Mage >

Without needing to be asked, Parvillo beamed the glove to his weapon rack.

Adam left the basement restaurant alongside Charlie, but stopped inside his player house as she went outside.

“Make it so none of the denizens can enter the tavern or restaurant.”

[The Flayed Lady cannot reach them through the Dimensional Tavern,] Parvillo said.

“I don’t care. I don’t want them in there.”

[Understood.]

“Did she infect all of humanity in this universe?”

[The Flayed Lady appears to have used the Guiding Eyes in this world to take over every active Player.]

“But not the people who were sacrificed to the Trials, and dangled over our heads like hostages?”

[No. That does not appear to be the case.]

Adam nodded.

Then he pulled out his visiting stone.

“Take me to the dimension of Nathan Fischer.”

< < Visiting Stone Activated > >

< Travelling to the DimensionofNathan Fischer >