How to Steal from a Fantasy Deathworld - Chapter 2 (Patreon)

Wade's eyebrows shot up. The region location announcement was standard video game stuff - he'd seen plenty of those. But… "Lethal Difficulty? What the fuck?"

If you survive, you'll be way ahead of the pack!

"And if I don't?"

won't be my problem lolol

Wade stared at the phone. "You seriously call yourself a partner?"

You'll love me soon enough. Or you'll die. (｡•̀ᴗ-)✧

He put the phone down and looked around to take stock of where he was. Lethal difficulty huh. All he ended up in was just a bigger underground cavern. This was a dungeon of some kind?

The golden glow he'd followed had come from crystal-like lanterns sitting on curved metal poles with weird designs, lighting up the shallow creek. Giant stone slabs lay abandoned on makeshift sleds, ropes and gear still connected.

Wade's eyes followed the wet walls up into darkness. This wasn't just a cave - the structured layout suggested something more deliberate. A mining outpost maybe? Which meant there should be workers.

There were. Or rather, there had been.

Bodies littered the stream bed, all bones. Metal hardhats still crowned skulls, gear and tools clutched in skeletal hands. Some were half sunken underwater, moss and mushrooms growing over where it was damp enough. Others slumped by the slabs, ropes still tied across empty ribcages like they'd been used to pull the slabs. Wade forced a nervous laugh - if this was his subconscious sending a message about overworking himself to death, it was laying it on a bit thick.

The phone buzzed. He looked down at it.

Better start running  。。。ミヽ(。＞.＜)ノ

What the hell di- his train of thoughts ended the moment he noticed the skeletons twitched. Then came the horrifying sound of bone scraping against stone as the first skeleton pushed itself up on its hands and feet.

Others followed, their hollow eye sockets somehow finding him in the gloom. Mouths opened up like a silent warcry from their rotten throats. Then, as one, they charged, some scrambling on all four’s before reaching upright into a full sprint.

Because, of course they would. This was a nightmare after all, walking dead bodies was just par the course.

Still feeling like everything was a lucid dream, some part of his head didn’t quite panic at the sight. Which meant he could very rationally decide to do the obvious choice:

"Ah-hah-hah-ha, nope." Wade turned on his heel and sprinted right back to his hidey-hole with a mildly unhinged laugh at how utterly ridiculous this all was.  

He didn't care if this was a dream anymore - he wasn't about to get torn apart by the undead. He dove right into the gap in the wall and started to scramble and claw his way back inside, getting his feet and chest fully inside, afraid that he’d get yanked out if he left anything out in grabbing range. "Nope, nope, no, and fuck no." He muttered to himself the entire time, like a desperate mantra.

Bony fingers dove after him, catching at his shirt as he wiggled deeper into the opening, tearing the fabric. One cold slimy skeletal hand covered in mud and silt grabbed his ankle and started reeling him back, stronger than he’d ever thought. 

Dream or no dream, getting grabbed was going to freak him out no matter the situation. 

He kicked hard at the hand in blind panic. More hands dug after him, the pile of skeletons trying to get a firm grip and yank him out like some nine year old menace trying to pull a hermit crab out, leg first. Their hands were sharp, and if they didn’t get a firm hold, they’d scratch and tear away at him. This dream was feeling less and less like a dream by the second. But he was wiggling downwards faster than they were catching up, getting cut up and scratched but not fully grabbed again.

Up until he got stuck halfway through, his body wedged awkwardly in the narrow passage. Behind him, the rattling of bones scrabbling on stones grew louder as hands still clawed after his legs. Skulls were fighting each other to fit inside. Wade shoved himself forward, ripping off a good amount of cloth and skin to break free past the rocks, finally tumbling through the other side. 

And the skeletons were still after him, dragging themselves into the hole like demonic hellspawn, slowly blotting the light behind. 

Wade did the only rational move he could think of. He heaved a stone stuck in the mud under him and slammed it into the open hole until he couldn’t shove it further. He didn't stop there, getting more stones piled up, until he couldn't fit more.

He put his back against the final stone in the path, and held it in place with his body weight, breathing heavily, listening to the frustrated scratching from the other side of the hole. "Okay," he winced, touching the shallow cuts on his leg. Definitely bleeding. "Spitballing here, but what if this isn’t a dream?” 

Because after the last few minutes of utter panic and terror, that should have woken him up out of anything. He ignored the buzzing phone in his pocket, probably gloating with the I-told-you texts.

A sharp jab at his side made him leap onto his feet and snap his head around to see. One of the skeletal fingers had wiggled through all the rocks. It curled out, wrapping around the rock. 

The only thing that came out of Wade's mouth that wasn’t a terrified scream, was an equally terrified string of swear words and incoherent babbling.

He could run, or fight. Wade instinctively picked fight.

He kicked that finger as hard as he could with his feet. Socks didn't make for good stomping equipment. So he yanked out a muddy rock by his feet and got to slamming it like a caveman. That was far more effective. “Good, get fucked.” He hissed as the last finger got crushed by one final swing of his rock. Surprisingly tough for delicate finger bones.

Wade took a moment to breathe, trying to calm down. He was safe here. He wasn’t safe out there, but here he was safe. And so long as the giant stone was wedged into the hole, none of them could crawl through. 

They'd give up eventually, or he'd come up with a new survival plan.

…

The scratching on rocks stopped. He thought they'd given up. Then he heard the sounds of metal picks tapping away at the rocks.

The skeletons weren't prying the rocks anymore.

They were using their tools.

Oh fuck, they're smart.

If his dream was following horror movie logic, he was about to get his eyes lovingly ripped out, best case scenario. These weren't just feral fast-running skeletons, they were intelligent feral fast-running skeletons.

He could hear stone breaking apart in small chunks on the other end. Wade took a peek through the cracks, turning his phone light on to get a better view. White bone stared him back with empty hatred, well lit in the blue light. It opened up in a silent scream at him, trying to bite. But Wade saw what he needed to: The skeletons were too jammed in to use actual pickaxes, the picking sounds were from chisels and smaller tools being used further behind.

He had to act or do something, else they were getting through. Already he heard a deep crack, followed by shuffling and scraping as the skeletons daisy-chained the stone backwards. Once they got the final stone broken into grab-sized pieces, he was absolutely fucked.

Something inside Wade's head finally clicked on. Two options in his head. Take this seriously, or don't.

If he locked in and handled this all as if it was real, the worst that would happen is a funny story about how his own head tortured him for a night. If he didn't lock in, the worst that could happen is that he'd get the horror movie eye treatment. And then die. Horribly.

Thus: Better to handle it as if it was all real.

There were weapons behind him. Picks and hammers he could use. Could he pry the keystone rock back a bit, and then go whack-a-mole with all all the skulls that popped out after?

The hammer strategy could work, but he wanted redundancies.  If he couldn’t keep up with the head bonks, then they’d dogpile him. Then the eye gouging and eating would happen. The stone didn't need his back holding it right now, so he got up and raced around, gathering whatever he could in the small cavern. Two solid sledgehammers, a pick, and several choice rocks to slam shut into the hole like a desperate cork in case of the worst. Which was likely to happen.

That was it for preparations. That was all he could do. With exception to the game system. He contemplated taking a look that direction. Did he have time? Light was turned on his phone again, and he looked through the hole to see what their progress was at.

A partly uncovered leering skull stared back as it had before. Deep within the hole, two or three feet on the other side. It silently opened it’s jaw up and down again, shaking violently, trying to get closer in every possible way it could.  The chipping was coming from behind that skull, probably another skeleton with a better angle. This one just wanted to claw his eyes out and couldn't do anything else.

The stones were sturdy so far, and there wasn't anything else he could do besides wait or pull off rocks early. Maybe three minutes in total before they got anywhere close.

He turned off the light on his phone, and stared at the black screen. "You got any ideas here on what to do?"

Look who's come crawling back to little old me huh (＃￣ω￣)

This piec- Wade shook his head, the texts wouldn't be here if whatever on the other side didn't care. "You want me to live through this right? Help me."

lol you got this backwards Michael~ I don't particularly care if you live or die, I only want to be entertained.

Wade drew on his well of willpower for dealing with idiots asking for the manager, and felt himself settle. Whatever this entity was, he needed to negotiate right now. "Where am I? Why are there dead skeletons after me? What's with the game stats? What's going on?"

Information, he needed information. If any of this was real, there was a reason and context behind it. And the texts seemed to have the answers.

That's a looooot of questions, maybe if you survive for a bit I might answer some later.

The texts clearly did not have the answers.

Wade fought back through the impulse to hurl his phone at the wall. "Can you just answer what's going on? Just that."

Naw.
Show me you can actually kill something and survive, and maaaaybe I'll consider it.
Good luck~ (¯ ³¯)♡