MADMAN APOCALYPSE

Brock squealed as I rammed my right fist through the wall to the sixth-floor hallway and grasped Logan around the neck. I pulled him out of the room and into the cosmic goop of outer space.

“Hey Logan!”

The malformed Corrupted Savior yelped in fear at my sudden appearance and the terrifying out-of-bounds area I’d yoinked him into.

Before he could defend himself, I slammed my forehead into his face and broke his nose. Again.

“I’ll kill… you!” he groaned.

“Think his brain is damaged,” Panda said, as I pulled back for another forehead smash.

My arm and hand was forcefully pushed off of him as the dirty soap bubble appeared around him. Logan stayed by the side of the building while I was ejected further out into the goop.

“Seriously!? Did his abilities reset when he resurrected!? That’s unfair.”

“Pot calling kettle black,” Panda said.

I swam back towards him, just as something like a shooting star pierced one of the floors below, melting a glowing hole in the wall it exited through.

“Was that a washing machine?” I asked, tracking the projectile as it disappeared into the beigeness of outer space.

“You’d better hurry this up!” the plushie urged.

Logan raised his rifle-arm and fired one of the glass darts at me, but it was reflected off my suit and right back at him. Instead of bouncing off, it penetrated right through his bubble and lodged itself in his thigh.

“Hah!” I said, then kicked my feet to get close enough for a punch. Before I could get within reach however, Logan quickly fled back through the hole in the wall.

It suddenly struck me that Brock’s purple curse was failing to actually turn him purple, perhaps because he was a half-demon or perhaps because a stronger sickness was already inside him. It also seemed like the Nasty Concoction from his dart wasn’t infecting him either, as he was quick as ever.

I came back into the building through the hole in the wall, just in time for a wave to hit me and push me up against the back wall that Logan had been crouched near a moment earlier. The wave washed over my entire body, but then the water just failed to stick, falling away as if it too had no idea what’d happened.

“Your Swan Cloak is waterproof,” Panda commented.

“Oh right. I’d already forgotten.”

I righted myself and began moving down the hallway, just in time to see Logan swing his serpentine sword at a surfer dude who wielded a wand. The guy flung his wand upward in a flashy move, raising a spout of water that punched the Corrupted Savior off-balance, though that irritating bubble still protected him from all damage.

“What’s a surfer doing in Castleburg?” Panda wondered. “The nearest beach is a 2-hour drive from here.”

“Maybe he went surfing in the Madeville Lake,” I muttered as I pushed forward despite the slowing Concoction.

“There are no waves in the Lake…”

While Logan tried to carve his way through the Surfer Mage, the guy was preventing his escape at every turn, raising walls of water to block him off or pushing him back with condensed spouts. I knew his mana wouldn’t last forever though, so as I came near, I put my right hand to my chest and pulled out my Soul Blade.

The Surfer Mage saw my approach and subtly maneuvered Logan towards me. I raised the weapon into the air, letting its Nodachi-like blade grow in size, before leaping forward with a diagonal slash that wasn’t halted by Logan’s bubble and cut right through his body.

My blade disappeared right after it left the other side of the bubble, its energy returned to my body. Then Logan’s midriff exploded and instantly killed him.

“Holy shit, dude!” said Surfer Mage, as the Corrupted Savior fell down onto the sterile hospital floor in two separate pieces, sick-looking blood leaking out and letting off a foul smell and dark-red vapor.

“Thanks for the assist,” I told him.

“No worries, mate. That was sick.”

“He’s not 100% dead yet,” Panda said, recalling the last time I’d killed Logan, only for him to get back up again. “You’ve gotta burn the body.”

“You wouldn’t happen to have any fire spells? We’ve gotta burn his body to fully kill him, apparently.”

“Nah. Just water.”

“Did you come from Madeville Lake?” I asked him.

“Ye. The waves have been gnarly ever since the Great Game started. Tyler dove down towards the bottom and found a World Boss flounder that was stirring up the water, but, like, it was level 40 he said. He’s super dead now. It was guarding a temple, but no one could get close. Me and the boys had just come to Castleburg when the Manhunt began.”

“Thanks for the exposition dump,” Panda muttered.

“Hunter has a fire spell by the by.”

I couldn’t remember exactly what floor the other Players had been on, but I was fairly sure he was either one below or one above.

“I’ll go find him. Stay here with the corpse and don’t let it get back up.”

“Wicked,” he said with an affirmative nod.

“I’m Gambit by the way,” I told him.

“Name’s Tanner.”

“Of course it is,” Panda said.

I started moving towards the stairs leading up, but then thought better of it and headed for the hole in the wall.

“Hey, why’s there a hand on y—?” Tanner started to ask and I turned to face him.

Then a volley ball the size of a mini-van tore through the hallway and utterly erased him and the dead-but-not-forever Logan on the floor.

“…Shit.”

“That was your cue to get to the exit,” Panda said.

The edges of the ceiling, walls, and floor that’d been utterly erased were glowing as though molten, and the glow started to coalesce in the air, taking on some four-dimensional shape that looked like a spinning top. As it spun around lazily, its shape morphed into a square and then a rhombus, then faces and arms appeared on its surface, before vanishing just as quickly.

“What the fuck is that?” I asked, pulling out my Looking Glass to inspect it.

Spoiler

“Get to the exit now!” Panda yelled and I instinctively threw myself out of the hole in the wall, just as a beam of opalescent energy carved a slice out of the building. The piece immediately turned into glass as it separated from the hospital and began to float out into the cosmic goop.

The glass hallway piece leisurely spun away as I frantically swam down along the building to the bottom-most room where Bee would be waiting.

In the near distance, the massive not-Saturn Voidspawn blocked out the vast beige backdrop of space with its enormous size. From the eye that split its surface rained a hellfire of projectiles towards the hospital wing, which was floating in front of it like one big target. Holes were already adorning many of the floors, but the real barrage had only just begun, as larger pieces of space debris utterly devastated the floors above me, probably killing the boss and the remaining Players, if they weren’t already dead.

The hovering four-dimensional being was trailing after me, continuing its opalescent laser show, though mostly aiming at the building instead of me, while carving out more-and-more chunks that quickly turned to glass.

I started punching behind me to use Brock’s Air Blast to propel myself forward and it actually helped speed things up a lot. Which was fortunate, as I made it to the exit room just as an airplane-sized frisbee separated it from the rest of the hospital wing. It was set on a spinning trajectory out into space and I had to hold on for dear life.

“Bee! Go through the exit now!” I yelled into the wall, while pounding my fist against it to break open a hole for me to enter through.

There was no reply in response, which I took as a good sign, and when I finally made it in, an opalescent beam carved through the ceiling and cut it off from the rest of the exit room, which just looked like a utility closet.

There was an open door in front of me with white light shining out of it, and I dove headfirst through the opening without taking a second to think.