Carnival - A LitRPG Apocalypse

“Does he always do that?” asked Armand quietly. Ryn snorted and nodded.

“His celebration dance looks like a pissed T-rex stood up too quickly!” chuckled one of Sam’s clones quietly, mimicking T-rex arms and stumbling sideways. The real Sam was currently in her house north of Treehome but she had numerous clones at the celebration, most of which were upstairs running interference with the bigwigs to keep them away from the bowling alley.

“I do not and you know damn well I can hear you. That’s another strike for me, thanks very much,” grumbled John. Ryn glanced up at the score board and sighed. Sam, her mum and dad, Evie and Amit all had a perfect game so far, eight frames in. Only the teenagers, still not used to their improved nervous systems and the HUDs in their vision, and Raoul were struggling.

“OWA, why do old men dance like that?” asked Ryn innocently, earning a scowl from John and a laugh from Vic.

“I hate OWA, Ryn! One Woman Army sounds so much better. Bloody Bob-net slang making its way into the real world… Look, I’m not sure but I think it’s a genetic predisposition towards embarrassing their kids.” Ryn noted two more Essence for the Jar. She needed to top it up after shopping today. John had paid the bill but only on the condition the swear jar was reset to zero as well.

“We all hate our Signatory names, love,” rumbled Raoul as he strode forward to select his bowling ball from the rack.

“You bloody don’t!” called Evie from the other lane. “Titan. You literally just got your power name as your name.”

“I would have preferred Armoured Titan, actually,” Raoul replied with a smile.

Evie took her turn while Raoul stood and studied the pins as though they might move as soon as he swung his ball.

The door leading out from the bowling lanes to the house swung open and slammed shut. Flash hurried in and went to crouch down behind the bar.

“Can I help you?” asked the Bio-Bob who had been standing mixing a drink as he looked down at the young man curled up by his feet.

“My bloody sister is trying to set me up with some girl from the valleys! She’s nice but I’m not letting Claire get it into her head she can play matchmaker! I’ll have to get married before she’ll stop!” snapped Flash.

“Well she’s coming this way so you can explain that to her when she gets here. Might as well stop hiding lad,” replied Bob. Flash flinched down.

“Hide me!” he hissed, throwing a glance over the top of the counter to Sam. She shrugged and resumed teasing her husband as he failed to get a strike once again. With his power disabled he was somewhat lacking in the inhuman accuracy and strength departments.

“Armand?” said Ryn quietly. The boy nodded and wiggled his fingers like a stage magician just as the door opened and a large raven flew in, followed by a young woman in a long green dress.

“Is he in here?” she demanded as the raven orbited the room.

“Hi Scav. Hi Claire. Who are you looking for?” asked Vic. A caw echoed down from above as the raven circled the bowling lanes and returned to Claire's shoulder.

“My big brother. He needs to settle down. He’s getting a reputation with all the philandering and- Oh, sorry kids. How are you all? Having fun away from the crowds?” she pivoted once she noticed the younger members of her audience.

“Haven’t seen him. Isn’t he wowing the potential Signatories with his good looks and charm?” asked Sam.

“He skipped out a few minutes ago. Annest is perfect for him and he just buggered off. Sorry Ryn,” she apologised for the language but Ryn made a note of the debt anyway. “If you see him let me know?” A chorus of ok’s came back and she hurried off muttering to herself.

“I think he went down to the lower levels?” offered Sam, getting a grateful nod from Claire who set out to continue the hunt.

“Thanks Sam,” said Flash as he crawled out from behind the bar.

“I didn’t do anything,” she replied.

“It was Armand who did the illusion. I think you owe him a favour, Flash!” called Ryn as she moved to take her turn on the lane.

“Who?” Flash’s eyes skipped across the people present and alighted on the tall, dark haired boy. “You?” Armand nodded.

“De rein, monsieur,” Armand said with a slight bow.

“You fooled a level 34 scout and my sister? At level three. Thanks kid. How do you find these crazy talents John?” Flash asked.

“That was Bob, actually,” John said.

“You set up my father interrupting your daughter's team's fitting?” asked the boy as realisation dawned.

“John, you don’t give away the secret! For the love of god let me retain some mystery! Take some undeserved credit, you're usually so good at that!” complained Bio-Bob as he took a sip of a garish looking cocktail. John flicked him a middle finger in response.

“I thought you were a whisky drinker?” asked Bad.

“Have you seen the top shelf here? I’ve tried them all. Hell, I make half of them and Pete makes the rest. The kid seemed like a good fit. I just needed to engineer a meeting and let nature take its course.”

“Does my father know?” asked Armand in a worried voice.

“Hell no. No offence kid but your old man is a bit of a prick,”

“I would not phrase it so crassly but I concede your point,” said Armand stiffly. “He is a good man. His responsibility has worn him down over the last several months.”

“Didn’t mean anything by it, kid, we can all be that way out sometimes. Sorry if I offended you. John, you need more Blueferm down here- ah thanks!” a bottle of the sickly blue beverage had appeared by Bob’s elbow.

The room rumbled, several bottles fell from the bar and shattered at Bob’s feet. Most of the adults yelled a variety of expletives as the world began to turn white.

Ryn stumbled as she was teleported to the ground in the Grove. She glanced around frantically and found her friends weren’t in good shape. Bad and Sally were ok, they looked like they had a bad case of sunburn, but Kev and Armand, whom she had quickly come to count as a friend, were writhing on the floor with skin peeling off in long strips every time they twitched or moved.

“Shit,” said John as Kev, Armand and Raoul, who was in the same boat as the teenage casters, vanished.

“Where did they go?” Ryn demanded.

“Medics. Evie, take Flash up top please but keep your distance.” A temporary portal opened next to John and a stream of Sam’s clones poured through.

“We’re going to fuck whoever that was up, right?” one of them snarled.

“We are. Vic, good job catching so much of the heat. The kids and the big guy would be dead if you hadn’t. Can you support Evie?”

“Whoever just killed our friends…” Vic’s angry rant faded away as she shot upwards on a column of fire.

“Dad? Need you to get some Ents in here. We’ll see who we can save from the Topping but unless they were a Signatory- It doesn’t look good,” said John to the trees around him.

Ents began stepping out of the trees around them.

“Hi Ryn! Let’s take you and your friends into the Grove eh? I’ve started hybridising some of my trees, how about we go take a look?” said the closest Ent, gently shepherding the shocked teenagers deeper into the woods. Ryn glanced back over her shoulder and saw her Dad’s armour appear on him. She had never seen that look on his face before. he suddenly looked like he was a dead thing whose only purpose was to make other things dead as well. It scared her.

As the kids were moved off John looked at Bob blankly.

“Drones inbound?” he asked and Bob nodded in response. “The footage is pretty crap but it looks like the bloke from the Reich wasn’t a level fifteen crafter. Has anyone got a proper read on him?”

“No. John, you need to get the bastard clear. The survivors need more medical attention than Raoul and the kids,” said Bob urgently as off to the west a shadowy cloud of drones rose up and flew rapidly towards John’s home.

“Survivors?” snarled John. “Who didn’t make it?”

“A lot, John. Anna’s gone. A chunk of Wayfaires leadership just got wiped out. Get up there, please!”

John appeared in the sky over the ruins of his home. The carefully kept gardens and courtyard were gone, washed away by the heat and left as semi-molten rubble. John began porting out bodies, starting with the living that Bob had helpfully marked on his HUD. A handful of Signatories were duelling the man at the centre of the explosion. No one else was still in any condition to fight.

A lot of the dead hadn’t even left anything to bury. They’d been turned to gas and rapidly dispersing ash by whatever power the man had used. As soon as the wounded and dead were clear, a matter of a couple of seconds, John blipped down.

“Thanks guys, but this is my house.” John blipped away the bruisers who had been going toe to toe in rapid fire exchanges of punches and kicks with the assassin. He put them down by the hospital in Wayfaire.

“You’ve made a mess, whoever you are.” John used Identify.

Name: Otto Richtenhoff

Level: 15

Ability: Trinket master

“You don’t remember me? You fucking ruined my life, John.”

The face was familiar in a way. Not ugly but not handsome either, somewhere in the middle. Sandy hair, cut short in a style popular in Wintersreich at the moment. Utterly nondescript. There was something about the eye’s though. John had been on the receiving end of this glare sometime in the past, he just couldn’t think where or when.

John reached out to blip the man away and to his shock his power had no effect. Shit. . Only the twins are past the Carnival in levels and he isn’t one of theirs. Who is this dickhead?

“You’re familiar but not so much that I can place you,” John offered as he blipped a pair of ten ton rocks out the Graveyard buried deep under his house, unaffected by the attack that had ruined the surface.

The man glowered and flashed forward without another word. John reacted immediately, his cybernetic reflexes letting him just outpace the blur that shot towards him. He appeared behind the man and swiped with his right arm, a milky blade extending from his wrist but all he cut was air.

The man ducked and spun, a foot flashing out that launched John away into the air. A swift series of teleports bled off the momentum and John hovered in place looking down as his opponent strode casually across the still the molten garden. He was fairly sure the kick had cracked a couple of his dragonbone ribs, judging from the ache.

“You set this in motion John.” The man leapt and John blipped aside. As he flew through the air the assassin released a blast of white hot power that propelled him back towards John’s new location with fingers locked into claws that were aimed at John’s throat. A barrier sprang up in front of John and the man bounced away just as a beam of incandescent plasma from Vic lanced down to catch him on the rebound.

A sphere of energy flashed around the assassin, enough to spare him any damage but it also knocked him away and the man sailed over the edge of the plateau. John blipped after him.

The Grove had grown up around the base of the Topping and John watched the man disappear into the trees his father had been transformed into. He held his position and counted silently. Before he reached three there was a scream of rage and the assassin jumped back through the canopy trailing roots and vines that had wormed their way into his skin.

John intercepted him with a rock. A rising rock. The obelisk of multicoloured obsidian appeared directly beneath the man with enough force to level a village but travelling straight upwards. The assassin was launched into the sky with his legs broken and useless as John blipped after him, carefully keeping pace while staying out of range of any caster type attacks. The man was clearly a hybrid, like Flash or the now long dead Adrian, so he was dangerous at any range.

The ground fell away as John paced the ascent of the assassin. The trees vanished into blurs and even the Topping became little more than a smudge below them. John wrestled with himself for a moment before sighing and blipping in a collar. He appeared next to the tumbling man and slapped it around his throat. The rage bubbling in his mind made him want to deal out a swift death but they needed information. John consoled himself by internally reaffirming that he would kill the man after they let Gemma crawl through his head.

Gemma available? Got a live one for her, he sent to Bob.

Dead. They’re all dead, John.

John couldn’t think of anything to say. The urge to simply end this excuse of a human being grew stronger but he fought it down. The assassin had gone berserk as the collar had snapped close and drove its hundreds of insectile legs into the man's throat.

“Not again!” he kept grunting as he gasped for breath and struggled to remove the organism that had shut him off from the system, leaving him powerless. John righted him with a blip that corrected his momentum to vertical and moved alongside him while he waited for gravity to cancel the impact of the rock that had sent him skywards.

“The more you struggle, the tighter it gets,” John said coldly.

“No- no shit!” hissed the assassin.

John blipped them both down to where he had left Bob and what was now a couple of hundred Sam clones. Multiple Sam’s surged towards the assassin but Bob stepped between them and raised his hands.

“After we get what we can out of him, Sam. Please?” he asked gently. The Sam’s scowled but a few nodded and they all moved back, keeping their eyes locked on the murderer.

“You just killed a lot of good people, boy,” said Bob as he crouched down and shoved the man's hands away from the collar. “You and I need to have a good, long chat. I don’t expect you to talk yet. That will come later, after a lot of pain.”

“Fuck off Bob! I was already dead anyway and you’re too much of a pussy to torture anyone,” spat the assassin.

“You know me? You’ve known me in the past anyway, haven’t you? I can’t place you though and my memory is pretty good. If you’re lucky you’ll talk to me. If not, I’ll send you to the Dragon so he can alter you. You’ve heard about his abominations, yes?” For the first time the man looked genuinely afraid. “Then we’ll let Mindscar have a go at you. We’ll probably already have what we want by then, but it’s better to double check with this kind of thing. You know how it is.” Bob grinned down at the young man who began to shiver.

“Just kill me! You should have done it years ago anyway you bastards! It would have been kinder!” he snapped, regaining some of his courage.

The man's face was familiar. John was wracking his memory but couldn’t find a match. Years ago this man would just have been a boy. John hadn’t had to fight kids back then. The teenagers he sometimes had to put down, the ones who went insane on their power and became murderhobos, they were all more recent.

He used Identify again.

Name: Ryan Johnson

Level: 41

Ability: ???????????

“I wish that wasp had killed you!” snarled Evie’s long forgotten classmate.

Of all the people who had committed what John considered to be serious crimes since the system arrived, the only one he hadn’t regretted letting off the hook was Ryan. He’d just been a scared boy, grieving his dead parents and John had been, at worst, an accidental victim of a badly concocted plot to get revenge on the man the boy had thought responsible for their deaths.

Anna had had him collared and kept away from everyone else. John had kind of forgotten about the kid afterwards. He had argued with Anna for insisting on collaring Scunners rather than killing them but he hadn’t questioned her mercy when it came to the boy this monster had grown out of.

Now he had grown up and found a way to fuck with Identify, somehow secretly gotten his hands on tens of millions Essence which was a mind bogglingly large amount even to John, and kill a bunch of John’s friends and colleagues. Evie was going to- Ah shit!

John reached out and blipped her away, back to her barracks at the Wall.

Teamchat:

Stormwitch: Dick move, Dad. Should have let me fry the twat fifteen years ago. I’m coming back through the portals.

Traveller: Once we get what we need I’ll end him cleanly. No cooking him alive. I reckon there’ll be plenty of killing to do as a result of today. You’ll get your share in time Kiddo.