Deadworld Isekai

Matt didn’t have a great answer for Lucy. He agreed that the system probably hadn’t built her, if for nothing more than the sheer amount of trouble she had caused it. But as to where she came from, or who she was outside of Gaia, he had no real evidence for any guesses. The ideas he did have were all pretty dark in ways he didn’t want to think about, and that he guessed Lucy didn’t want to think about either. He didn’t bring them up.

But that didn’t mean he didn’t know anything. It wasn’t origin story stuff, but he knew plenty about Lucy.

“Listen, Lucy.” Matt gave Lucy some time to calm down, enough that she could wipe off her face and turn to see him looking only slightly puffy. “You know I don’t know where you are from either. But I know where you are, and it’s here, with me. And I think you know this, but this is permanent. We are friends. I don’t care what happens, or where we go. You have a place with me. I’m glad you are here.”

“Matt..” Lucy was trying to cut in. Matt wouldn’t have it.

“No, listen. I also know who you are right now, and that’s my partner. Your job is keeping me alive, as hard as that is. It’s also putting the hurt on the system for putting us in this shitty situation in the first place. Your job is the same as mine, and I can’t do it without you.”

Lucy hung her head, lost in thought about what Matt had said. Matt blinked. He was doing his best, but he couldn’t deny the reality of her problem. He might be trapped here, but he had a whole life before this one. He couldn’t imagine what it was like to have an identity but not any of the associated memories. Life on Gaia was hard enough, but not having any happiness to reflect on? That was tough.

“Lucy, I’m not going to pretend all that’s enough. I know it’s not. But if there’s a way to figure out more about this, I promise that’s going to be top priority for me.”

“Really?”

“Really. Above the museum, above the mana generator. As soon as we get a lead, that’s what we are doing. I promise. And I even know the first step.”

Lucy perked up immediately. “What’s that?”

“Find that wizard and beat the shit out of him. He’s maybe an asshole, but he seems like he knows things.”

—

Far away in the forest, the worm was pissed to the full extent that a worm could be pissed. It had been chasing food all day, and the food hadn’t become tired or fallen down so it could catch it. It was dimly aware that this was unusual, but it didn’t have any other options but to chase, unless some other food showed itself. Chasing food was the thing it did. The only thing it did, really.

Then the food fell into the hole. It hated the hole. It had fallen into the hole once, long ago. That had hurt, and if it wasn’t so small back then it probably would have splattered. It usually didn’t go anywhere near the hole, but now the food was down there. It could smell the food clearly. It could smell every place the food had touched the side of the hole on the way down. It circled for a while, hoping the food would climb out of the hole itself. It wasn't a sure thing, but it didn’t seem impossible. But the food just sat down there, making food smells and not moving at all.

All the time, the worm was getting hungrier. When there wasn’t food, it hardly moved at all. It just slept. The only reason it knew this food was here was that the food had caught all the little, smaller worms it normally couldn’t catch and left them lying around. It had already eaten those, but then it moved all day. It couldn’t go back to sleep now without eating. It'd be uncomfortable.

The only good thing was that it knew how to get to the food. The hole didn’t go on forever. Eventually, it became earth. That was how it got out when it had fallen in before. If it went to the end of the hole, it could wiggle into the hole. It would hurt his spikes, but he could always grow more of those.

Grumbling, it moved towards the place where the hole turned into the ground. This was too much work. But there wasn’t any choice. There was food down there. It ate food. It was how things worked.

—

“So your bones are back now? All in the right places, I trust?”

Matt stretched himself out and jumped in place a bit. Everything seemed right, as far as he could tell.

“Yup. I gotta say, this healing skill is not that bad. This would have taken days if it were just up to my Vitality. At least a few days.”

“Well, don’t get comfortable. I have plans.”

“Yeah?”

“Yup. I was thinking about it while you were asleep. We need to kill this worm, right? And it likes the ground? We have to get it out of the ground.”

“Easier said than done.” Some dirt dislodged off the side of the ravine, sprinkling on Matt’s face. He wiped it off. ”That thing’s pretty big.”

“That’s why we have to be smart, Matt. When we get out of here, we're going to build a ramp.”

Some more dirt fell down, getting in Matt’s hair and on his face. He accidentally inhaled some and sneezed.

“Matt, could you pay attention?”

“I’m trying to, it’s just this dust. It’s everywhere all of a sudden.”

Actually, why is it falling down? Any dust I dislodged earlier should have just fallen by now, Matt thought. The area he had fallen down into was a narrow part of the ravine, partially because it was bent at that point. Matt didn’t have a great view on the ravine to his left or right.

“So what I’m thinking is, we sink tree trunks. Big ones. We make a ramp, and you run up, and the thing grounds itself, and then…

“Hold on a second. I’m loving this, but I need to check on something.” Matt walked to one side of the curve, where he could see reasonably far down the canyon. It was clear, at least as far as he could see. Walking to the other end of the curve to confirm he was fine, he reflected that this canyon probably didn’t get a lot of action under normal conditions. It probably wasn’t that weird for at least some dirt to fall down.

As he rounded the other end, he saw the worm.

Okay, yeah, I probably could have predicted this.

The entire worm was visible, now, and it was huge. Matt wasn’t sure how it managed to find its way into the ravine, but it was there at the bottom. It slithered like a snake, its spikes rubbing against the rocky ravine sides with a scraping noise he could just barely hear. It wasn’t that close, but seeing it fill the ravine almost completely struck fear in Matt's heart.

“Lucy, plan’s off.”

“Wait, Why?”

“We have a Pac Man situation. We need to go.”

Lucy peeked around the corner.

“Oh, shit. Yeah, let’s get moving.”

—

Both Lucy and Matt agreed there was no way that the worm had jumped down. It was too big and mushy. Maybe it could have survived the fall, but there was no way it would have been in as good of condition as it looked like it was. At the same time, they couldn't imagine that it had climbed down from the same kind of heights Matt had fallen from. It wasn’t equipped for it.

Which meant that the ravine probably didn't go on forever. Matt could try to climb out of it, but Survivor's Reflexes was warning him against it. He supposed that he might fall and break a bone again, and then have nowhere to go except inside the worm. The prospect of being lunch for the worm was enough to motivate Matt and Lucy to run and try to see where the ravine rose on the non-worm side of things.

Despite the worm being a good distance away and moving quite a bit slower than it did in the dirt, they kept up a pretty good pace. If the ravine finished as a dead end, they didn’t want to get caught without enough time to pursue other options. This turned out to be a wise choice when they rounded a corner and faced a sheer rock wall instead of a gentle ramp upwards.

“Looks like I’m climbing.”

“Yup. Hurry it up.”

Matt wasn’t experienced at climbing, but he did have enhanced strength and reflexes, so he figured he could make it work. It turned out to be easier than he thought, as even small handholds turned out to be grippable with his stat-enhanced hands. In no time at all, he was higher on the wall than the worm could probably reach, even reared up. At the rate he was going, he’d be at the top in about a minute.

Then, the wall caved in. A chunk of the cracked rock came out of the wall under his weight, causing a chain reaction that dislodged the whole section. Matt crashed down to the floor of the canyon again, this time under dozens of chunks of rock. Before he could even take stock of his injuries, he knew he was in bad shape. The worm was louder now, and still coming.

“Matt, we have to get out of here NOW.”

“I know. But I’m not climbing anywhere. Look.” Matt’s leg was bent at an odd angle, clearly snapped and unusable.

“Shit, shit, shit.”

“That’s all I have, I’m sorry.”

And then the worm was there. The only thing that seemed to keep it from immediately getting to Matt was that the chasm itself narrowed at the end, leaving barely enough room for it to move forward. But the worm was nothing if not malleable, slowly squeezing itself into the space. With great pain, Matt sat up and backed up as far as he could get. It was no good. It was still coming forward.

Finally, it was so close that Matt could smell its breath. It smelled like dirt and rotten meat, which made sense. There was only one thing Matt could do at this point.

“Pocket Sand!”

Pocket Sand let Matt throw any powder he wanted. Usually, he was content to limit himself to normal dirt, since the idea was to get a momentary distraction and maybe blind something. But now he was about to get eaten, and he was pissed about it. This dumb worm was going to win. Matt didn’t think the rotten cube powder would kill it, but he was damned if he was going to let the thing be happier about any of this than he had to.

The black dust spread through the air, hitting the thing all over its gnarly front-mouth. As expected, it didn’t kill it. It didn’t even seem to distract the worm. But it did seem to royally piss it off. As the dust hit its mouth, it paused for a moment before making a loud, grumbling roar, dislodging dirt and stone as it thrashed its body side to side as much as the limited space would allow.

Matt slowly pulled out his shovel, ready to make a last stand.

But the worm wasn't done yet. Roaring again, it reared up into the air suddenly, jerking its entire bulk into the air so hard it just barely avoided lifting its tail off the ground and going airborne.

And then it got stuck.