Chapter 233: Apologetic Despair

  Even though Landy was beginning to show signs of impatience, Zach hesitated before approaching any closer. And not even because he both looked and sounded like a monster out of a child’s worst nightmare, but because the name “Landy” floating above the NPC's head indicated that he was hostile.

  It’s red.

  One of the first things any new adventurer learned—and something that Rian and Lienne had learned the hard way—was that the color of an NPC’s name provided important information about how, or how not to, approach. If the name was green, the NPC was friendly. If the name was white, it was neutral. And if it was red?

  Hostile.

  Right now, Landy’s name was ruby red, though Zach also knew that it didn’t necessarily make him a threat. If so, Angelica would’ve killed Zach many times over, as there had been numerous times he’d annoyed her and caused her name to flash red. Although, in her case, the keyword there was “flash.” Her name flashed red. Landy’s, on the other hand, was basically locked into the color in a near-constant, intimidating way. Every so often, for perhaps a tenth of a second, it flickered white, but it was so quick that it was easy to miss. For the most part, it stayed red.

  It’s probably just his emotions, Zach thought. I doubt he can even control it.

  With his stunningly incongruous eyes locked onto Zach, Landy began tapping his fingers on the counter. “What’s taking so long?” he demanded. “Why do you make me wait? All I ever do is wait. Wait, wait, wait. Every day, I wait.”

  It was difficult for Zach to contain the shock and pain that mixed together at seeing him in this condition. Being that he was an NPC, Zach wondered if the Great Ones had deliberately designed Landy to look so horrific and monstrous. His nose was split down the middle and looked like it was about to fall off, and he carried an awful stench that Zach could smell even from all the way over here.

  “Why wait?” he asked again.

  Zach pointed. “Sorry. It’s just that your name is red.”

  “So?” he asked, speaking the word like it was the most obvious thing in the world.

  Zach shrugged. “Good point.”

  Deciding to ignore the color of Landy’s name, Zach began walking slowly over the shredded, blood-stained, scratched-up floorboards towards him. As he did, Landy lifted his head, and his eyes began to change: both the small one and the far larger one, each widening in desperation, and Zach realized after a moment that it was not upon him that Landy was gazing, but at a place somewhere behind him. Twisting his hips and glancing over his shoulder, Zach figured out that what Landy was staring at was the portal that he had summoned to bring Zach here.

  “Unfair,” Landy said. Although he uttered just the one word, he spoke it in such a way that it stretched and dragged on, taking nearly ten full seconds for him to speak that single, solitary word. And then he said it again, this time with a pain-filled whimper. “Unfaiiiiir!”

  Lifting and extending his arm, Landy reached out with his scaly, lumpy, pus-covered hand as though to grab the portal he’d summoned, through which a wavy, shimmering image of the tower atop the sky island could be seen in a dim glow cast by the moonlight, the one in which he and Zach had spent all morning and afternoon collecting cards.

  Zach, placing his palms down on the undamaged counter, said, “I…I could help you get through it. If you’re not able to do that on your own, I mean.”

  “Help…me?” he asked, speaking the words softly, though without any trace of hope or optimism. “Help how?”

  Landy turned his head and looked directly at Zach, and now, having gotten up close, it was difficult not to awkwardly pull away or recoil in fear and disgust. The stench of decay and bodily odor was, all on its own, enough to make him squeeze the sides of the counter, anchoring himself in place as he struggled to fight against his body’s desire to move in the opposite direction. But when combined with the NPC’s twisted, demented visage, it became an even greater test of his restraint.

  The NPC’s face, only a few feet from Zach’s, really was like something out of a nightmare.

  Zach wasn’t sure what, in particular, made it so difficult to behold. Perhaps it was the unnerving reality of his right eye being almost three times larger than his left, or maybe it was the way in which every last one of his teeth was bent at a different angle. Whatever the case, it was downright unsettling. Still, Zach understood that, in the thousands of years that Landy had likely existed, this, right here, right now, was Landy’s first-ever face-to-face interaction with another sentient being.

  And even Zach wasn’t a big enough asshole to ruin his first real conversation.

  “How can you help?” he asked again. And like before, not even a trace of hope came through on his words. He spoke with something far more pessimistic than mere skepticism. It was as though the impossibility of someone helping him was a ground truth every bit as binding as the laws of physics.

  Zach crooked a thumb over his shoulder. “I have an ability that can pull you through that portal. It’s called Phase Rescue. It works with another ability of mine called Boundless. But uh, I’ll spare you the details and just give you the short version. Basically, as long as I can see you, I can bring you to me. I mean, assuming this place”—he looked around—“isn’t on the edge of the universe.”

  Landy showed no reaction to Zach’s words, which caused Zach to question whether or not he understood what he was saying. Zach tapped his fingers against the counter several times. “Do…do you understand what I’m saying, Landy?” He turned around so that he half-faced the portal, and he extended his arm and pointed his finger at it. “I can stand on the other end, and as long as I can see you, even though you’re probably really far away, I can still pull you out of this place.”

  Very slowly, and a touch eerily, Landy shook his head, moving it all the way to the left and then all the way to the right. “Won’t work,” he said.

  “It will, actually. I know it sounds hard to believe, but as long as I can—”

  “I’ll just come right back,” Landy shot in. “Won’t matter. Never matters. Getting out is easy. Can’t stay out. I get out, I get in. I go out, I go in. As soon as I go out, I’m back.”

  Zach faced forward again, and he forced himself to meet Landy’s uneven eyes. “So, even if I could bring you through your portal, you’d just teleport right back here?”

  “Yes. Can never leave. Never, never.”

  Zach sighed. “I’m sorry.”

  Glancing around the place, he felt a chill travel down and up his spine in both directions simultaneously. “So…so do you get restocks here? Wherever this place is. I can’t help but notice it’s pretty empty. In Mushkie’s shop, he gets a bunch of common and uncommon items in his store restocked every week, and you can technically buy as much of it as you want as long as supplies last. And uh, he’s also got another section of items that also replenish each week, but these are rarer and don’t ‘run out.’ Meaning, everyone gets a chance to buy these—oh, but in a limited quantity. Do you have something like that?”

  “I have the same,” Landy replied. “Every week, they come. The things. They come. Every week, the things appear. Food things. Item things. Trinket things. Adventure things. Shelves, cabinets, boxes. They always come back. I destroy it every week. Always destroy. Have to destroy.”

  “Huh?” Zach whipped his head around as he tried to make sense of what he was hearing. “Wait, are you saying that this place also…?”

  Zach felt a rush of dread course through him. It was strong enough that it forced him to suppress a gasp. “Wait, so you mean…”

  He looked around at all the scratches, the blood, the burn marks, and the obliterated particles of what looked like various pieces of furniture that had been detonated hundreds of times over.

  Oh, Gods…

  “Landy,” he continued, “are you saying this place repairs and restocks itself every week, and that all this damage…you did all of this damage this week?”

  “Yes,” he said. And then his voice quadrupled in volume, reminding Zach much more of the way he tended to speak when possessing one of Zach’s cards. In an instant, he conjured up that maniacal screaming and shouting that was sickeningly starting to feel normal.

  “Every week!” he shouted. “I smash, I burn, I break, I scratch. But I can’t leave. Can never leave. Can’t leave. I can’t!”

  Zach, sensing him getting out of control, tried to redirect his attention. “So, why’d you bring me here?” he asked. “You said you had something that can—”

  “—I break it all!” Landy interrupted, refusing to change his train of thought. He looked down at the front counter, which Zach suspected of being indestructible, as it, along with the chair, happened to be the only two pieces of furniture in the entire spacious item shop that still existed.

  “Can’t break this, though,” he said. “Can never break, nope, can never break. I’ll show you.”

  “Show me? What do you mean you’ll—”

  Zach jumped backwards out of pure reflex, both horrified and confused as Landy flung his entire body forward and slammed his whole face down onto the front counter. Zach, watching on in disbelief, cupped his hand over his mouth in shock as the sound of the collision was louder than a gunshot. And the damage…Gods, the damage.

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  8,211,441

  Having done over eight million damage to himself, Landy lifted himself back up and then slammed his face down a second time, this one even harder and making an even greater bang that echoed off the walls. And then he slammed a third time. And then a fourth.

  On the fifth, a wound opened up in his forehead, and a spray of blood covered the entire front counter, with some of it even reaching Zach, causing a few droplets to stain his bare chest. On the next slam, however, the amount of blood doubled, and now it got all over Zach’s face.

  “Landy, stop,” he whispered.

  Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!

  “Landy—stop!” he shouted, horrified.

  Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!

  Eventually, the NPC did stop, and when he did, he slid off to the side and onto the floor.

  Dead.

  “L-Landy!” Zach cried, running over to him. “Hey!”

  His body did not linger for long. Like many NPCs, it vanished, though in Landy’s case, it simply blinked out of existence all at once. Every part of it was gone in an instant, until there was nothing on the floor but a big patch of blood that was vaguely in the shape of Landy’s body. For a moment, Zach stared at it, silent, confused, wondering what he was supposed to do or say or what this even implied. But a moment later, the implications were made clear, as he heard his name being called.

  “See?” a voice—Landy’s voice—said to him.

  Zach looked up, and he was once again seated at the counter. And seeing him there made two things very clear to Zach, each thing being awful all on its own. The first was that Landy could not even die. He was immortal but in the worst way possible. And the second thing—the second thing was even more disquieting, as Zach now had an answer to his earlier question: had the Great Ones deliberately designed Landy to look so horrible and monstrous?

  The answer was no.

  Something had changed about Landy. Something it took Zach a moment to realize. Though he was almost exactly identical to the way he’d been before, this newly respawned NPC had one minor difference about him. The eyelashes on his right eye were now completely missing, and in their place, Zach spotted a newly created scar.

  So that’s why he looks this way, Zach realized. Every time he respawns, he comes back looking worse.

  Was this an oversight or an accident? Or had the Great Ones intentionally created some mechanism to punish him each time he killed himself? Either possibility would not surprise him. Regardless, the fact was now clear as day: Landy looked this way due to dying what was quite possibly thousands upon thousands of deaths, only to reawaken within seconds a little worse off.

  The realization left Zach so thoroughly disturbed, unsettled, and uncomfortable that it was only when Landy started shouting at him again that he realized the NPC had been speaking to him for nearly a minute.

  “Are you ignoring me?” he shouted. “Why are you ignoring? Why, why, why?”

  Zach shook his head, though mostly to clear it. “Sorry, no. I was just…yeah, sorry. I’m listening. What were you saying?”

  “I said I have to go. I have to torture the Gods!”

  “Right…” Zach rubbed his face to wipe off some of Landy’s blood. He looked at his palm, which had become red. He lowered it out of sight. Struggling to regain his focus, he asked, “So, why did you bring me here? I still don’t know.”

  Landy pointed to the portal, through which the night had darkened to the point where only blackness could be seen on the other side. “There’s a thing this week,” he said. “Thing that will help you see so you can fight in the dark.”

  “R-right,” Zach said, his words filled with uncertainty.

  Given all that he’d just witnessed, he’d completely forgotten that the whole reason Landy had opened this portal in the first place was because Zach had told him he planned to grind mobs and level up all throughout the coming night. The implication had been that he had some item or ability that could help.

  “So, you have a weekly haul as well, right? Is it one of those items?”

  “Yes. One of those. Now buy it quickly so that I can go. No more waiting. Tired of waiting. Always waiting!”

  “Sure,” Zach whispered. “Just go ahead and—”

  The screen popped up in front of him, and Zach’s mouth popped open in the exact same moment. Words filled his eyes. Prices. Costs. Names. And it all had the effect of sending him into an immediate, unbreakable stupor.

  This was….

  This was…!

  Holy fuck! Is this real?

  There Zach was, in an item shop in some unknown part of the universe, with blood on his face, his chin, and his chest. He had just witnessed something so disturbing that it threatened to break open and rip into his own trauma for the sheer depth of how awful it was. And yet, despite this…despite all of this…

  Zach released an uncontrollable, deep, and completely unintentional shout of glee as he saw the list of weekly items pop up in front of him. His entire body literally shuddered in amazement. Pure elation temporarily blocked out every other sensation he’d only just been feeling. Every last neuron in his brain adjusted to focus on this and only this.

  “Oh my Gods, Landy. I don’t fucking believe my eyes! Gods be praised!”

  There was a lot to take in. A lot for him to consider. But all of it basically faded into a single blur, as his eyes honed in on just the fourth the list.

  Light Stone.

  An actual fucking Light Stone!

  Zach had only ever seen one of these since entering the adventuring world, and even that was considered a treat, as most people never even saw a Light Stone, let alone got to touch or own one. In this case, it happened to belong to Mr. Oren, and until being forced to use it sometime around the dragon raid, it had been his most coveted treasure.

  There were many things Zach did not know about Light Stones, and there were even more things that nobody knew. What was known, however, was that a single Light Stone was far more powerful than all three colored stones combined. Not only did a Light Stone do what the red, purple, and yellow stones did, but it was widely believed it could do far more than that as well—that it could treat or heal conditions that the other stones were unable to treat, regardless of how they were used or in what combination.

  During the walk down the long, but thankfully not infinite, hallway in Angelica’s, Zach had heard Kesten talking to Donovan about an adventurer named Aerick Ondoranth, 5th in command of the adventuring guild, Lost and Found. Aerick had been in Ogre’s Axe at the time when the nuclear bomb had gone off. Several adventurers had been there, actually. And all had died but him, as he had used a Light Stone.

  It was the only known cure for radiation poisoning.

  But that wasn’t all. Though unconfirmed due to its extreme rarity, many adventurers seemed to strongly believe that a Light Stone could reverse dementia or even Alzheimer’s. It probably could, too. It was a healing item that had no equal. And there it was, for just two million gold. A stone with a real-world value closer to a hundred million.

  If you can even put a price on it at all, Zach thought.

  Scanning the other items on the list, his excitement only continued to ramp up. In addition to having a variety of the other three colors of rejuvenation stone in stock, Landy also offered some more escape ropes and the teleport stones, the latter of which Zach still had no idea how to use or what they were good for.

  But there was more.

  He also had an Enchanted Awakening Gem of Authentic Cognition. Zach actually knew what that was, as he’d looted one once before: back on Elendroth with Kalana. It had been that beautiful-looking gemstone that, when touched, felt slimy and meaty. It had been what had given Ruby sentience. And there it was!

  As for the other three items, Zach was willing to assume the “Star Gun” was the thing that would help him see at night, and that the “Stamina Potion” had something to do with…well, with stamina. Maybe it was restorative? He’d used to hear Jimmy talk all the time about “health potions” in his various Earth simulations. So it served as a decent clue.

  Without so much as a second thought, Zach pressed every item every time, buying the entire list, as it would be asinine to do otherwise. He didn’t even care that he was spending 10,533,500G of the 13,200,161G he’d earned these past eight months in his position as a “world leader.” No, it was worth every gold. Every gold. He wanted all of it.

  “Landy, this stuff is incredible,” he said. “Really. You’re amazing, you know that?”

  Landy flinched as if Zach had punched him in the face. It was an odd reaction, though Landy was often made of such odd reactions. Still, something about this one seemed different, as his entire mouth popped open. And then his whole demeanor changed, and it did so all at once.

  “No more waiting,” he said. “Go back now. Go!” he shouted angrily, pointing at the portal.

  Zach, knowing all his new stuff would be sent securely to his Bank and Storage, decided he could wait until he was back on the sky island before looking at any of it. “Yep. Thanks again, Landy.”

  “You’re…welcome,” Landy whispered.

  Zach turned around and began walking across the demolished store. He stopped, though, as Landy called after him. “Zach, wait!”

  He paused, turned around, and regarded the monstrous-looking NPC. “Yeah?”

  A look of pain and regret came upon Landy, one that seemed out of place, even for him. It seemed like fresh pain. New pain. He stood up from the chair he was sitting in, his two misshapen eyes fell over Zach’s, and in a strangely contrite tone of voice, he said, “I’m sorry. For what I did to you. I did bad. I’m sorry, very sorry. Very sorry, Zach. Very sorry.”

  Zach smiled. “It’s no problem. I’m over it. Believe it or not, it’s not even in the top ten worst shit I’ve had to deal with. A couple of illusions? No big deal. I’m over it. Just make sure you don’t get in too deep shit with the ‘Gods,’ because we have a boss to kill tomorrow.”

  “No,” Landy replied, more pain in his voice. “No boss to kill. We aren’t going to see each other again.”

  Zach tilted his head partially to the side, confused. He immediately came to a halt, and he turned himself back around, now fully facing in Landy’s direction. “Huh? The hell is that supposed to mean?”

  “I changed my mind. I’m not returning to you tomorrow. Not gonna return. Won’t return. No more returning, nope, nope. You adventure alone again. You do the things you do. Not with me. Not anymore.”

  Zach squinted. “Wait…I don’t understand, why are you—”

  “I never should’ve bothered you. You’re a friend. Right?”

  “Right.”

  “Wrong!” Landy snapped. “I hate too much to be a friend, Zach. I can’t be a friend. I can’t. I hate. All I feel is hate. I am hate. I hate, hate, hate, hate!”

  “Landy, where is this coming from all of a sudden? I thought tomorrow we were going to fry that boss together? Why’re you suddenly saying you’re not going to—”

  “Go away, Zach,” he interrupted. “Forget you ever met me. Forget my face. Forget this item shop. Forget the Gods. Forget, forget, forget!”

  Zach hesitated, both confused and worried in equal measure. But a moment before he could voice his concerns, Landy again shouted at him. “Go away!” he screamed. “Go! Leave! Get out! Out of my shop! Leave now, or I will attack!”

  With a confused, but also saddened nod, Zach turned around and continued on his way to the portal.

  He wasn’t sure how he was supposed to feel.