Chapter 14 Mental problems.
Barabas P.O.V.
One week has gone by, and still, there is no news from inside the stone egg. Neither Sam nor Gary has made a sound.
The tribe left two weeks ago already, marching North under Temate's command, to fortify my old den.
We, Tenka, Salaba, and I, were supposed to leave a day later than the group, to cover their tracks. But we are still here, camped around a silent sphere of rock.
No more energy enters the egg. The suction stopped days ago. I went to touch it even, testing the surface with a claw, and no problem occurred. It is just cold stone now.
For him not to come out, he has to be missing something... A key. A spark.
I search the animes... cough... the memories he left behind in my mind, during our shared sessions. This is a huge mess of colorful characters, screaming warriors, and questionable physics.
I usually just put it out of sight, in a corner of my Mindscape, so I don't have to deal with the noise. But, after checking through the archives for a few hours, sifting through the nonsense, I found many laws and concepts, that I have never seen before, due to the lack of technology in this world.
He knows things about the universe that even the gods of this world might not know.
The only way I can think of to help him, is complex, but it will probably work.
I isolate all of his memories that reside in my head. A backup copy, essentially.
Instead of searching for what is missing one by one, which could take years, I concentrate the entire bundle. I compress it, making it like a copy, in a ball of pure energy. It won't contain much of the laws themselves, as I can't replicate his understanding of physics, but traces are all he needs. It will be like a DNA sample for the soul.
I stand on my hind legs, holding the shimmering orb in my paws.
I throw the ball at the egg. It sinks into the stone like water into a sponge.
Sam P.O.V.
I wake up in my bed, under the warm duvet, inside the Japanese house of my Mindscape.
The morning light filters through the shoji screens. Outside, I can hear the bamboo clinking in the soft wind, a rhythmic, soothing sound.
(Man, that was the best sleep I had in years. No volcano, no pain.)
Chirp! Chirp!
Gary sings on a branch outside.
(Nice, birds sings... Wait!!!)
I sit up, throwing the covers off.
"Gary, how did you come in here?!"
He flaps his wings and flies in through the open door, landing on my shoulder. He chirps cheerfully, just like in the morning, back in the real world, when he sings to wake us up for the day.
He nuzzles my ear.
(Still no talk, hein? Just bird noises.)
He leaves my shoulder in a hurry, taking flight again, and suddenly I feel a presence outside. A heavy, malicious presence that doesn't belong in my Zen garden.
(W.T.F. Is this my mindscape or a convenience store? Does everyone just have a key now?)
I get up and walk to the porch. I focus my will.
"Weapon."
A Daedric Sword from Skyrim materializes in my hand, heavy and jagged, glowing with red runes. This is my mindscape, after all. Imagination is reality here.
I check out the garden and freeze.
A giant snake is coiled around my bamboo grove. It is massive, purple, and his mouth dripping with foamy slime.
(Ok. Now I'm scared. Why the hell would my mind have this shit in it? It never happened to Barabas. His intruder was me, and I brought tea...)
I sigh, gripping the sword.
(No choice but to clean up, I guess. This is my mind, so this could be like a mind disease or poison. An invasion of my mental space, by the chaotic energies I absorbed.)
(I should take things slow. If this is a manifestation of my psyche, rushing in could be dangerous.)
(Then this weapon and my battle potential, are limited to the amount of processing, my brain can deal with...)
"Armor."
I conjure simple iron chest, arm, boot, and helm pieces. Nothing fancy, just solid protection, easy to make true. Then, I focus on the sword.
"Wind Style: Vacuum Blade."
A layer of sharp, invisible wind, coats the jagged edge of the Daedric blade.
I launch myself at the snake.
Then I move faster than thought. Before the beast can even uncoil to strike, I slash its head off in one clean motion.
Squelch.
The head falls, dissolving into black smoke.
But as I look past the bamboo, my heart sinks. Outside the garden, there is a bunch of different snakes. All sizes. Hundreds of them slithering through the perfectly raked sand around my home.
(Thank you, all the games where you can get poison resistance objects. I knew grinding for loot would pay off one day.)
"Ring of Poison Immunity."
A green ring appears on my finger. I feel a cool sensation wash over my veins.
I slice my way into the bamboo forest. It is a massacre.
Luckily, the bodies disappear into smoke, and the damage to the environment regenerates after a while. My mind is self-cleaning, at least.
I can feel my mind growing stronger, as it absorbs their "energy" upon death. It is like XP, or maybe they use my brain power themselves, making me feel lighter?
I find a less venomous snake and let it bite me, to test the ring. Since I wore the poison immune ring, my tolerance did not go up, but I felt nothing.
(This is between reality and illusion. I heard training in your mind, like visualizing weight training, actually affects your body, making the nerves and muscles work out while you are not moving. This must be the same principle on steroids.)
I summon a standard red Health Potion and an Antidote potion. I gulp the antidote just in case.
(This should do.)
I even remove the armor to move faster, cleaning up the place, taking an antidote every once in a while when the fumes get too thick and slow me down.
I clear the garden, then the path to the gate out.
Until the Boss shows up.
"Kukuku!..."
The laugh sends shivers down my spine. The damn boss is a certain pale-skinned snake-man. We will call him Pedomaru to avoid copyright strikes from the universe.
"HAAARRRRRR..."
He makes his throat signature sound, tongue wiggling out, as he spit his blade, golden eyes slitted with malice.
He spews a massive cloud of toxic purple gas.
"Sorry, Pedomaru, it's my first time with poisons, be gentle. Hahaha!"
I take a breath of the toxic cloud, having already kept a mouthful of antidote ready. I swallow it as I breathe.
It works, but I'm still slow thanks to the heavy, poisoned air clogging my lungs. I ignore all equipment, downgrading to the simplest sword, so it helps to be lighter.
My processing speed is still fast enough to fight him, but we are on equal footing.
(What's with me?! The first boss is one of the legendary Sannin? He's already like a cockroach, without his clones, or reanimation.)
Right now, all I'm doing is dodging, slashing, and drinking potions like a raid healer.
My mind slowly regains its usual speed, as I adapt to the toxins. Enough to search for a technique to finish him.
Lucky for me, this seems to be him in the Third Great Ninja War era... So only five elements, poison, and snake stuff. No zombie armies.
I finally find the technique to deal with him. Well, since I can't cast a complex spell yet, I "summon" a barrel of liquid nitrogen, in the ground and stick a small explosive to it.
I do this as we fight, planting traps here and there while dodging snakes. I even shoot him with a simple revolver I conjured.
Bang! Bang!
Of course, I tried earlier, but he's too fast. His instinct keeps him from being shot, and using something that I'm not used to, won't make a difference in this fight, unless I catch him off guard.
I lead him instead. I feint a stumble. He lunges, about to slash me with his sword.
Right on top of the nitrogen barrel bomb.
"POOF!"
The explosion ruptures the tank. Liquid nitrogen sprays instantly, freezing the air, creating a cloud of vapor.
Pedomaru freezes mid-lunge. He becomes an ice sculpture made out of flesh.
I put a bullet right between his eyes.
BANG!
CRACK.
He shatters into a million bloody ice shards.
I know he is dead, when I feel my mind restore and grow up. A massive chunk of knowledge and reflex settles into my brain.
Now I know, some of this is me, while some of it is not me. My fault...
...
I explore the rest of my mindscape. Well, I stop at the border of the Four Seasons. There are different beasts in all of them... waiting.
(For now, my home is clear. I need to train a bit before I continue. That snake was too close.)
In this battle, no matter how many anime and books I read before, once Pedomaru used his Ninjutsu, mixed with his speed and close-quarters combat prowess, I could only dodge, and only thanks to my knowledge of his attributes.
I could not come up with a damn spell, since nothing made sense yet, even if I can feel my power changing. The poison was blurring my mind a bit too, but even without it, I believe it would be the same. Even the Shadow Clone is too much processing on the fly. Heck it's too much even now...
A fireball would be my current limit, in a high-speed battle. I spit them, after focusing it in my mouth, since it is the easier way to imagine the power being converted into flames, using the lungs as a bellows.
So, I pass a day training whatever I can in the safety of the Japanese house zone.
After that, it went easier.
With only [Blink] (teleportation) and [Air Walk] (solidifying air), which are more skills than spells, I can take care of the other four bosses guarding the seasonal zones.
Summer Desert: I fought a Phoenix. I drowned it in sand and suffocated its flames.
Winter Iceland: I fought a Xianxia Ice Queen. I used pure kinetic force to shatter her defenses, keeping my body temperature high.
Autumn Storm: I fought Thor, grounded his lightning and used speed to trip him up...
Spring Forest: I "fought" the First Hokage... The best case of spring generation...
I cheated this time. I copied and used a poison, a lot stronger than anything Pedomaru could do, since it contained a trinity of effects, targeting the soul, body, and mind with disintegration properties.
I compare it to drastic radioactive decay, making the atoms fission upon contact. I had to abandon the weapon that I used for it, in this case, I used a small tranquilizer hand gun, modified for delivery. That took a lot of thinking, because I was genuinely scared of the guy... I used his goofiness against him...
I said "Sorry!" while he smiled dumbly, scratching his head, as he disintegrated slowly.
Pfft chuckle.
Pretty anticlimactic... I shot him while he was talking, unlike the others, who attacked on sight. I felt bad, for about two seconds.
Anyway, once I clean up everything, except what is in the locked Doors of Law, the Last Boss appears.
(Ok. This chapter is so cliché...)
This time it's me. More precisely, my alter ego. He looks just like me, but his eyes are black voids, and his smile is... wrong.
(Waterfall of Truth, much?)
"Yes, this is your shitty mind, after all." The Dark Me says, sitting on a conjured throne of bones.
I ignore his throne and style... I conjure a simple wooden chair, sit down facing him, and observe "him."
"So that's my 'darkest' self... Tell me about you. I think I accept myself pretty well. So, tell me something about myself I don't know."
"You're a pervert."
"Whaaaa?... Well, maybe a little bit, but not really, right?"
"Don't say you don't want to fuck Tenka? Or the others. Man! You could fuck them all at this point! You have the power to do it and you act like a monk."
"Well, that's just my ego. In fact, it's you I should say. I know I want to. But that doesn't mean I will. I don't say that my will is unbreakable. I'm no hero, but I'm not a devil either. Consent matters, context matters."
"Your will, right. What about your addictions, hein?"
"Weak argument... This world saved me from those. Things like not having salt, sugar, soap, and junk food made me free."
"And Pot."
"And Pot, thank you..."
"You're welcome! Hahaha! That's why you smoked every plant that you could find at first. Hahaha."
"Yes Yes... I suck..."
(My other self actually feels sympathy for me. How low. It's good... No hero shit, right?)
Black mist leaks from my other self. He stands up, offering a hand.
I grab his hand firmly, but don't let go when he tries to.
"I'm not letting you go. Stay and help me."
I try to make him as "real" as he can be. Instead of fighting and destroying him, like the others, I accept him and lend him some of my processing power.
(Bad me?... No, he's me... And I'm grey, neither white nor black.)
My power drains a bit, flowing into him, and I gain a connection. The black mist solidifies into skin again.
"Hey, Brain!!" (Smirk)
"Sup, Body." Dark Sam grins.
"Hahahaha!" x2
"Welcome home."
"Yeah, but we don't know how to get out. We thought we had to beat the bosses. Now I see it's not the case. The exit is still locked."
"Shit! If I have to clear all these rooms, we're doomed!"
"Yeah! For real, man! You're a fuck up! All that shit behind those doors can kill us!"
"Stop being a jerk! You know that I didn't know this would happen."
We bicker for a while, arguing over whose fault it is, until the world shakes violently.
RUMBLE.
We look at each other...
The ground shakes more and more. All the rooms make noises behind the closed doors, resulting in a cacophony of screams, explosions, and hums.
Then, one door bangs particularly loudly, trying to open.
BANG! BANG!
The sound level makes my mind go blank for a second.
"You know why I made this wall, right?" I yell over the noise.
"Yes, it's a 'Pseudo Mental Barrier'!" Dark Sam yells back.
"Thank you. I haven't thought of a name yet. Nice!"
I give him a thumbs up.
"Fuck your motivational shit! You know I don't need that!"
"Did I split myself into white and black, or what?"
"More like, your inner mind was always realist and gloomy, while your outside self was artistic and cheerful. The King of Fake Smiles! Fucked up!"
"Yeah, that's why I hid... cough... stayed alone."
BANG! BANG! BANG!
The doors are buckling. Something wants out. Or something wants in.