Anything ~ 23!

- Luke -

“You’ve gotta be kidding me.” Luke stared as the beautiful white horse galloped toward him in seemingly slow motion. “There’s sentients here?”

“Absolutely there are! And you freed us, we will be eternally grateful!” The voice was coming from atop the horse, specifically from it’s iridescent horn. “The Giga-ant had warped space so much that an entire waterfall of liquid mana from above was becoming too little. Without access to enough mana, the creatures of this world were becoming little more than monsters, unable to reason or think beyond base instincts. What is your name, hero?”

“Uhh…” Luke looked at his hands, hoping that the goats all the way back in Zone one wouldn’t suddenly be able to remember him. He debated killing this unicorn to keep it quiet, but stayed his hand. The countdown timer was showing a mere hour remaining before he would be forced to turn around, and if the creatures here would allow him to pass… perhaps he could make it. “I’m Luke. Can you let me through to the end of the Zon, or do I need to-?”

“Oh, yeah! I can totally let you through! Ya~ay! I get to be the one to guide the he~ero!” The unicorn reared up and spun around, trotting away without any signs of hostility. Luke finally cautiously took a step across and into Zone twelve proper,

Welcome to Zone 12! This is the first place you will meet the naturally formed denizens of this plane! Not all creatures contain a Skill Pearl, but their bodies are useful in many other ways!

Luke reached for the unicorn, barely holding back as he remembered that he needed to move - not engage in a bloodbath so he could test what, exactly, the bodies of these creatures were good for. He kept an eye on the unicorn, feeling that its horn was strangely familiar. He nodded as he remembered back when hallucinogens had affected him, and minutely nodded; that must be it. The creature glanced back at him, whinnying in laughter even as it’s voice echoed from the horn. “What’s that look for, grumpy-pants? Are you in that big of a rush to get out of here? This is the most beautiful place in the world!”

The glorified horse was correct: the natural beauty of this place was far higher than any other Zone he had been in. For one thing, the unicorn was white, not a shade of blue like literally everything else. Well… everything besides the trees in the previous Zone. “How did I miss that? Those trees were green…”

“Wow! Green trees? That sounds really strange!” The unicorn began frolicking, and other unicorns began coming out of the grasslands and circling them. All of them were cheering and praising their new hero. “Hey! Back off, we need to get to the end of the Zone so he can get home!”

“Wo-o~ow! He can even leave the world?” another unicorn went totally still, its eyes going wide in shock. “That’s so cool! He must be the strongest person on his planet!”

“Wait!” A deeper voice called, and a unicorn at least half again as large as the others stepped through the moving circle of unicorns. “You’re going to bring him straight out of the Zone? What about God? You’re not going to introduce him to God?”

“He said he needed to leave straight away!” The original unicorn whinnied nervously. “I didn’t think he should take the time to-”

“To literally meet God.” The larger unicorn sighed in disappointment and stared at Luke. “Listen, you should really come meet God. If you don’t, you’re going to have a really hard time going any further, and you likely won’t even be able to get past the barrier to the next Zone. I’m almost certain it's going to be a requirement for you.”

Luke watched the numbers on his return timer ticking away, and let out a low growl of frustration. “Fine! Let’s go. Can we please hurry this up?”

The large unicorn nodded and started leading Luke slightly to the side of where he had originally been going. His original guide stayed by his side and offered consoling words, “It's all fine! After you meet it, I’m sure your regular concerns will seem insignificant. Time never really seems to matter there.”

More and more unicorns arrived, and the noise in the area reached ‘small town’ level. Seeing that too many being close to him was making the Murderhob nervous, the large unicorn made them back away. They started galloping and running as Luke’s timer began blinking. “We’re almost there, Ascender. When we get to the Progenitor’s Oasis, all you really need to do is bow and take a drink of the water to show your respect. You’ll get a blessing, and access to the next Zone.”

“This process is quick, yes?” Luke’s hands were trembling as they ran. He didn’t really ‘do’ nervous, and when he did, it usually just manifested as rage.

The small guide unicorn scoffed lightly and whispered almost too softly for Luke to hear, “He wants to rush through a face-to-face meeting with God. I don’t… the outside world must be really strange.”

“I’m Coral.” The larger one stated to try and distract Luke from his woes. “This is Shelly, and she’s not used to visitors. Unsurprising, as it’s been uncountable millenia since anyone has ever come down from a higher area. The Giga-ant… as far as we know, only one of our people has ever gotten past it. He could fly, so we think that perhaps he may have avoided the landstorms that were created by the creature moving.”

“Your people can fly?” Luke looked at the horsey bodies next to him doubtfully.

“Only the most powerful of us are unicorns, silly!” Shelly’s horn began to flash, a sign that she had more to say, but Coral shushed her.

“We’re here.” The large unicorn nodded at a huge pool of mana-water that surrounded a small island that was hidden by fog. “Clearly, you were expected. The fog is there to protect you from seeing something your mind cannot comprehend.”

“That’s where god… is? How did it get there?” Luke looked out at the shrouded island doubtfully. “How long has it been here?”

“Oh, it created itself there. It’s been… oh, generations since it did.” Shelly started speaking as Coral motioned for Luke to bow and drink. “One day, our predecessors were here and God split the sky, falling to the ground and embedding itself. Ever since it showed us the way, the most powerful of us took the form that it did.”

Luke paused as he was bending down. He didn’t mind drinking mana, but just as his hand was about to dip into it, he noticed something moving in the water. He had never seen something else survive direct contact with the liquid; something wasn’t adding up. “What-”

The Murderhobo was launched into the air by a powerful buck and kick from Coral. The angle he was at meant that he was sent into the air above the water, and was able to catch a brief glimpse of a huge ring of unicorns rearing and laughing. Shelly shouted at him just before he impacted the water, “Enjoy meeting God! We all do it someday!”

Luke hit the water and plunged in deeply. His eyes were open, and the water was perfectly clear. That gave him a great view of fanged snails swimming through the water at his face. He swung out and obliterated the closest one with a punch, and it shattered into dust that was swept away by the water in an instant. Another got close to him and slammed into his forehead, biting down only to be rebuffed by his mana-formed helmet.

That seemed to give it pause, and Luke killed it with an upswing. He hit the bottom of the lake and kicked toward the island, hoping to be able to get out of the water and into a safer location. Dozens of snails were slapped away, and even more of them attempted to break through his helmet. Luckily for Luke, his mana regeneration in liquid mana was so high that even the fiercest of group attacks only ever managed to make a small crack before repairing itself.

He stopped fighting them when he noticed that they couldn’t hurt him, and pulled himself onto dry land. “Great. I’m bald again.”

There was a chorus of happy cheers from the bank of the lake. “Who got him? Was it Krabby?”

“No way, Moray was the fastest in there for sure!”

“Who cares who got him, his host body will be able to open a way into the outside world!”

That comment made the others go quiet, and Luke’s eyes caught a glimpse of saliva running down their muzzles. Their flat teeth shifted into points like sharks, and their cheerful eyes hardened and elongated into slits. Long tongues licked out, but luckily the changes stopped there. Luke was glad that they were mostly still just horses. Coral’s impatient voice echoed over the water. “Hurry up already! You had to have eaten his brain by now and integrated! Show us what you can do!”

At that moment, Luke’s return timer hit zero. He robotically got to his feet and turned to face the direction he had come from; then sprinted toward the water and leapt as hard as he could before activating Feather’s Fall. As he drifted toward the unicorns, they cheered at his display of power. Only a few of them noticed that something was wrong.

“Where’s his horn?”

In an attempt to hide his face as he drifted closer, Luke looked back at the island. At just that moment, a breeze blew away the fog; revealing a huge stone that had somehow naturally formed into a rough horse shape. His eyes were drawn to its head, where a bright blue bone had clearly slammed into it and gotten wedged. Luke hit the ground and started his forced run back to the end of Zone nine, even as he fought with all his willpower to turn back.

Luke slaughtered his way through the shocked unicorns at a sprint even as he howled into the sky. “Cookie. Cookie! I’ve found you! I’ll be back! Don’t be afraid, they think you’re their god! I’ll be back for you!”