Chereads / Consumption of Worlds / Chapter 22 - A Dead World

Chapter 22 - A Dead World

"I bet you've noticed, but you have a bit on blood on you." Jackson said before awkwardly scratching the box on his head.

"Yeah, by the way…" Auclair shrugged the statement off, but just couldn't let it go, "That thing on your head, what is it?"

"It's a TV." Jackson responded as the screen flickered as the expression changed to a smile.

"A what now?"

"You don't know? Damn, you must be from a really uncivilized world. Well, judging by your clothes I guess that would make sense. I can't really say anything though, compared to what I've heard about the those Iron Syndicate folks, my world is basically child's play. Although I got here not to long ago either."

"Okay, but what is it?" Auclair asked again about the television mask.

"Uh." Jackson struggled to think of an explanation, "It's like a moving picture that can also make sounds."

"So like drawings?"

"Well a television- that's its full name by the way- can have photographic pictures. I guess that's how I'd explain that. Do you know what a camera is?"

"No." Auclair admitted.

The face on the television blinked in befuddlement. Jackson took another moment to organize his thoughts and raised his finger.

"Alright so…"

They started walking in a what seemed to be a random direction while Jackson explained the intricacies of technology. With each new required explanation, Auclair felt his brain shrivel up further in confusion.

"Alright, alright. That's enough, I don't get any of it." Auclair waved away Jackson in annoyance.

"It'd be easier if you could see what I was talking about. We're here we are by the way." Jackson crossed his arms.

Auclair looked up and saw a large store.

"I'm gonna buy you a pair of clothes, then I'll getcha an inn. How about it?"

"How would I pay you back?" Auclair asked.

"Well, let's do this. If you ever see me in a match, you give me any stuff you have on you at that moment in time. If you have nothing, I'll get nothing. Otherwise, I get everything whether it be a single copper coin or a relic."

"An interesting offer, I'll admit." Auclair rubbed his chin in thought, but decided he didn't care to search for someone else to give him stuff for free. "I'll accept."

They shook on it and entered the general store to find someone snoring behind the counter.

"Watch this." Jackson said after gently nudging Auclair with his elbow. Jackson's hand turned a dial on his mask all the way up and whistled as hard as he could.

The person manning the register bolted up in confusion and fell back in their seat, landing onto the floor, sending papers flying. They lifted themselves with disheveled hair and a sword in their hand.

"Who is it?! Oh, damn it Jackson! Look at the fuckin' mess!" They angrily stabbed their sword into the floor and let it stand upright. "What the fuck do you want?"

"I'd like to make a purchase." Jackson put his hands together in a praying manner and the eyes on the television closed blissfully. It was obvious that he was really messing with the man.

"I oughta beat your ass… Just pick something and get out of here." The man waved his arms around before bending over to pick up the papers. All the while mumbling curses under his breath.

"He's a good guy." Jackson said as he brought Auclair further into the store. After grabbing some nice clothes, the two left the store and went to a nearby inn.

"I'll be staying at this inn as well if you have any questions. I'm in the fifth room, you'll be in the tenth." Jackson said and started walking away.

But he stopped and suddenly turned, "Wait, I almost forgot. Do you like animals?"

"Yeah." Auclair answered with a hint of confusion.

"Oh," noticing this, Jackson apologized, "-sorry. I just like telling people my hobby, I like watching animals so if I'm not in the inn I'm probably out somewhere."

They waved Auclair goodbye and went to their room.

Auclair thought about them for a second and shook his head, choosing not to dwell on it. He looked at the clothes and decided to head to his room to wash up. He took off his old clothes and took a long bath, madly scrubbing away all the blood.

Unfortunately, his old clothes were incredibly stained so he just tossed them. He kept the paper tags hanging from his ears however, as they only had a faint splotch of red on one of them. He looked at himself in the mirror with satisfaction.

He left the bathroom and sat on the creaking bed.

'Guess now is the best time to fix my core.'

Auclair's consciousness entered where his core stayed and he looked at the crack in it in annoyance.

'If that little pipsqueak asshole is still around, I'm gonna kill him.' Auclair thought angrily about Hero as he began to fix his core.

It would be a long and arduous process that'd take a day or two of constant and hard work. Even then it'd be completely empty and he'd have to fill it again using the system.

After a day of attempting to fix it, he frowned at his results.

'The problem is beyond what I can fix.' He cursed and angrily got up before pacing around inside of his fake body that was sitting on the bed with crossed legs.

He sighed and bent down to begin fixing it further. He was determined to get it as fixed as possible so he wouldn't be bothered by it.

'Just what did that little shit stab me with?' He asked himself an entire week later, long after what he estimated it would take to fix the problem.

He had molded the core back over itself to reshape it but the crack kept coming back. Eventually Auclair managed to get it in a place where the crack stopped coming back, but the area was still incredibly weak.

He estimated he'd have to take it slow in gaining strength or else the crack would appear again.

'If I could get to my brother, he'd be able to fix it. Erus probably could too.' He thought of a few other gods as well, but Iyseuss and Erus were the ones who'd have the highest rate of success.

Auclair sighed and left his body. He immediately fell back in his bed and heard his back crack due to being still for a week. He groaned but forced his eyes closed.

He woke up the next day at noon and slowly hobbled out of bed. He cleaned himself and left the room with tired eyes. He headed down the stairs to the bottom floor where reception was. His stomach growled and he wanted to start getting stronger again.

So without waiting any longer, he opened his system.

[Would you like to begin your next trial?]

[Yes / No]

He tapped [Yes] immediately.

As his vision began fading to black, he faintly noticed someone staring at him.

The system appeared before his eyes when the world turned completely black.

[Welcome to the dead world of Kocrion. The Hex Trials often are used to bring a world to its knees to make it easier to introduce the Iron Syndicate to them. However this trial is the opposite. You must survive along with its inhabitants for a predetermined amount of time while completing the objective.]

[This is a team based trial. You will randomly be placed in a team with contestants around your rank.]

[You must survive a month in the trial and you must stop the hivemind from sinking its teeth into the world.]

Auclair frowned.

Then he saw a beautiful white light appear in the darkness as it slowly flew high into the sky leaving a faint trail behind it.

"Contact!" He heard a voice yell at the top of their lungs before a whistle rang out.

"Contact!" Another voice repeated what the previous had said and blew their whistle.

Whistle after whistle started ringing further and further from where Auclair stood. More flares were shot out which started to reveal the surroundings as they lit up the dark sky.

He could see tens of thousands of men flooding forward along large walls and massive cannons mounting said walls as they began shooting outwards beyond the walls. The large cannons vibrated the ground underneath Auclair as they launched artillery towards something Auclair couldn't quite make out. It seemed like an ocean or some massive body of water.

The deafening sounds of gunfire and artillery made Auclair cover his ears as he began walking forward along the top of the wall. He reached the edge of the tall walls and looked past all the soldiers blindly firing automatic weapons towards the ground desperately.

"Hoooo." Auclair couldn't help exclaim when he finally noticed what they were shooting.

The landmass that seemed like a sea underneath the flares shooting into the skies was actually a massive flood of undead. A wave of them slammed their bodies against the concrete walls wildly, before getting crushed under the weight of the wave directly behind them.

The artillery shells getting launched into the crowds blew massive chunks out of the waves as the pile of bodies grew ever higher. Some of the men and woman at the front lines started shooting a liquid out of a hose towards the bodies.

That's when Auclair noticed all the soldiers around him were wearing gas masks without any exceptions. The sea of undead reflected in the black lenses of the goggles as they fired unrelentingly at the crowds.

Once the liquid being shot out of the hoses doused the ravenous creatures trying to get past the wall, different soldiers started shooting flares towards the pile, starting massive fires. The liquid was apparently some sort of combustible. Smoke quickly started rising and due to the massive fires growing, the heat could be felt all the way up the wall.

"Wheres your mask?! Take my spare!" Someone grabbed Auclair by the shoulder before shouting in his ear to get their voice through the thundering surroundings. The pushed a gas mask into Auclair before stepping next to him and firing their gun wildly below.

Auclair looked at the mask in confusion, not understanding what it was. However he thought that the other soldiers weren't wearing it for no reason so he quickly put it on his head, fumbling all the way.

"Auclair?" He heard someone shout from behind him. He turned to see Jackson wading through the crowd.

"Guess I don't owe you anything!" Auclair shouted back.

"Gods be damned, I guess your right!" He shook his head in annoyance. Jackson wasn't wearing the TV and instead had his face covered completely by the gas mask. He had managed to see Auclair just before he put his on.

"Follow me! I'm one of your teammates! Let's go find the other two!" Jackson yelled. It was incredibly hard to hear, but the two made due.

"How'd you check that?"

"The system, how else?"

Auclair opened his system and started shifting through it.

[Teammates: Auclair, Jackson, DeadManWalking, and Lady Vere.]

'Random teammates my ass!' Auclair thought.

"I know one of them and I unfortunately have an idea who the second is!"

"Alright, if you see one, point them out. The other teams don't spawn nearby so they'll probably stand out. I take it they were also in your first trial?"

"Yeah!"

"Just to let you know Auclair, this trial blows the tutorial trial out of the water in terms of scale!"

"Yeah, I kind of noticed that already!" Auclair retorted.

That's when Auclair noticed someone with what looked like a child near him.

"Found one!" He yelled to Jackson before yelling towards them, "Norman! Connie!"

The two of them turned and began wading their way through the crowd of people.

"What a reunion!" Norman yelled at the top of his lungs while Connie had both of her ears completely covered by her tiny hands.

"Why is a kid here?!" Jackson asked Auclair incredulously.

"It's a long story!"

That's when Auclair was put into a chokehold suddenly. He was dragged back while the others quickly grabbed out for him. He just slipped through their grasp as the sea of soldiers around them split the group.

"I'll kill you you son of a bitch!"

'There's the fourth.' Auclair thought weakly as he saw Gwen so desperately trying to kill him. She pulled him through the crowd while the lack of oxygen going to his brain threatened to knock him out.

The other two followed quickly behind, but couldn't wade through the crowd quickly enough to catch up. With each passing second they lagged behind a bit more.

Gwen took Auclair to the edge and prepared to throw him over when she was suddenly tackled by the other soldiers who noticed her actions.

"Where's your goddamn gas mask?!" A soldier yelled at her.

When Auclair didn't have a gas mask, he seemed completely rational so he was simply handed one, but when Gwen was wildly dragging someone to toss them over the edge without a mask, they quickly stopped her.

She didn't respond from the ground and instead just glared angrily at Auclair who stumbled up, making sure not to fall over the edge.

"Take her to quarantine!" A captain yelled before barking out other orders to a different group of soldiers.

"I take it you know her and because of that, I take it she's also our fourth." Jackson reasoned after catching up to Auclair with tired breathing, "But why's she so pissed? What, did you kill her brother or something?"

"A little too on the nose." Auclair admitted. "Lets follow them."

They all began following the yelling Gwen as she got dragged away. Despite Auclair's displeasure of working with her, given the scale of the trial, it was most likely intended to be done with a full team.

Behind them, the sea of undead was slowly getting subdued as each wave that got finished off started raising the pile in smaller and smaller amounts. The soldiers however didn't cease their shooting until not a single movement could be seen.

That's when they began lighting everything on fire.

CONTINUE FROM LAST READ?
Chapter 28, Grand Councilor Abrams