Test Summoning: Apocalypse

I awoke from a stupor laid out on a dead branch atop a building in the slums. I looked down at myself and noticed I was missing one of my plastic clogs. My toenails had gotten disgusting from walking around barefoot. I was reeking of my own bodily fluids where I'd shit myself, multiple times, over the past three months. I didn't care since I was blitzed out of my mind on some designer drug I picked up with my beer mug money. It didn't matter if I got addicted since the chemical need will get reset tomorrow in the loop.

Now, my dear fabricated audience in my mind, I bet you're wondering how I ended up on a tree branch in the slums covered in my own feces. It's a long and embarrassing story.

It started out on my next loop after I got tired of killing the king. It was like every other loop, though my heart wasn't into it. I rescued Lia and went to Jummi's Baubles to sell my glass mug. This is where I deviated. While selling the mug, Jummi recognized I was down. I had been in this world for a while before first learning about Jummi and had come to terms with my situation, so she never saw me in my "I'm never going to see my family and friends again" stage.

Now? When Jummi noticed my state of mind, she offered a sympathetic ear. I took full advantage of that ear. I lost it and started talking about losing my loved ones, how they were gone forever and how I'd do anything to get them back. There wasn't anything I wouldn't sacrifice to experience the care and love again.

Jummi, surprisingly, offered me a room to live in. I gave Lia a few of the gold Sovereigns I sold the mug for and sent her on her way. I then told Jummi I'd think about it, went to rescue Tizek, gave him some money and returned to Jummi. She gave me a room to stay in and said I could take all the time I needed. Her famous taciturn personality still took the forefront, but I could tell there was a kind woman under it all.

The bigger surprise was, within three days of getting my room, Jummi began clearing out the junk from her home. I don't know if it was what I said or embarrassment of the state of her building, but there she was, cleaning out the garbage. Within a week, her front shop looked like a regular shop with catalogs out. Within a month, the rest of the house was in good shape. She was a cleaning freak.

When Jummi was running shop, I managed to get out of my room to check the place out. I had stayed in there in a haze for most of the time and was curious. I was in a guest room and poked around the other rooms. I found what were clearly four kids' rooms with fresh sheets on the beds. There was a kitchen and a living area along with a master bedroom, all recently cleaned.

The living area had paintings of Jummi's family. Her husband, Amis I recalled, was a jaguar-clan man with strong features and a kind smile on his face. Her four children appeared 15, 12, 10 and 8 years in age. The oldest two were squirrel-clan kids with jaguar-clan markings. The oldest was a girl and the second oldest a boy. The other two, boy then girl, had red squirrel-clan markings of their mother with a stockier jaguar build.

Based on what I recall Sari telling me, these paintings were made at least three years ago before the family left the city. I knew Jummi was 37, so it was unlikely the oldest was much older than 18 now.

One night, about six weeks after the start of the loop, I heard a knock on my door. I knew it was Jummi and bid her enter. I was doing my usual, sitting and staring out of the window at the side alley in my depression when she sat to talk. She had taken to coming in to check on me, further destroying my image of her as a strange and introverted shopkeeper. She had taken to wearing normal clothing, got rid of her glasses and changed her weird beehive hairdo back to a normal one. I had to admit Sari was right. Her sister was quite attractive when dressing normally.

Both of us were in severe down moments in our lives and we ended up making out. During the session when I had my hand up her shirt and on her breast, Jummi moaned for Amis. Obviously, this ended up disrupting the affair before it went further. I felt awful, like I was taking advantage of a woman in a vulnerable position. It was even worse when she started weeping and said she was taking advantage of me. It was a strange state for someone I had spent centuries thinking was quirky and emotionless.

After profusely apologizing to each other, Jummi told me about her side of the divorce. It started out fairly innocuous. She would practically buy anything brought in to the shop. In her mind, there was no such thing as a bad product, only a bad price. Of course, moving it to someone else was a different story.

As time wore on, she began collecting more junk. Amis was patient with her as the material started to flow out of the ground floor store room and up into the family living area. She always justified whatever it was she bought as being a "deal". Eventually, she began buying garbage in bulk because it was "cheaper" that way.

The growing collection began to rub Layla, her oldest daughter, wrong. Moving around the house became difficult as the family had to navigate pathways in the clutter. Layla was tired of stubbing toes on things. It reached a boiling point when Jummi demanded additional space in Layla's room because she perceived the house as having insufficient storage. When Layla pushed back, Jummi snapped at her and said "I don't have time for this, just store it".

The fighting got worse when Layla couldn't invite friends over anymore. Layla was embarrassed she was living in what she referred to as a garbage dump. All the while, Jummi continued to collect more things with the excuse it was a good deal.

Soon, Amis decided to have a conversation with Jummi. The younger kids were beginning to mimic Layla and were becoming hostile toward their mother. Amis suggested dumping the excess junk to relieve the pressure. Jummi vehemently refused, claiming it was all worth money and she wouldn't throw it away. Jummi admitted as she told the story it didn't make sense. Both of them were well-paid professionals and didn't need to scrounge for funds.

When Jummi refused to dispose of her growing collection, Amis filed for the divorce. He couldn't stand seeing their children speaking vitriol toward their mother and decided they had to separate to keep the mindset of the youngest three intact. Layla was the most supportive of the divorce and was the one who suggested moving away. Layla had gotten a reputation of being a junkyard child and wanted to escape to a new environment.

After the family moved out, Jummi's outward personality of being a cold, calculating businesswoman intensified. It was originally a product of being a shy introvert. Now it was her whole persona. She also began wearing frumpy clothing, thick glasses and the weird hairstyle since she wanted to look like she felt. She had willingly thrown away her family to avoid losing her junk collection, which only got worse after Amis left.

It wasn't until my arrival and breakdown having lost everything did she realize how absurd she was being. She had assumed I was talking about not being able to return to my old world. It didn't really matter. She realized I had lost everything while she still had the opportunity to reconnect.

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Problem was, she was too shy and embarrassed to try to even reach out. She didn't even tell her sister Sari about her change and continued visiting wearing her uglified disguise. I thought of offering my services, but realized it was a futile effort. It would just get wiped out in a few weeks and I'd be back on my ass in the castle basement wondering if I wanted to go through my regicide phase again since deicide was off the table.

So, I just hung around Jummi's shop being depressed. The only thing I did was buy a second dose of Hearstop and, the day before the invasion, I gave Jummi a quiet out in her sleep before offing myself.

On my next run, I decided to give Lia a fun life. First, though, I made sure to have my breakdown again in Jummi's shop. This time, I declined living there and came back a few days later. It turned out it wasn't me living there that triggered Jummi's change, it was my speech. Her shop had cleaned up dramatically when I passed by. Deep down, I apparently hadn't completely given up since I pocketed this for later.

As for Lia? I decided to not tell her about my time loop. I arranged stumbling on Tizek each time "randomly" then rented a penthouse hotel room with my platinum Sovereign. Then we just went out and did things. The theater. The carnival. The arena. I even made it a point to clear the Exterminator's Guild probation so I could check out trashy romance novels from the Guild Library. Over a few runs, I read each one of them, out loud, to Lia.

Lia was uncomfortable with what I was doing on each run no matter how I approached her. I tried turning on my natural charm and, for whatever reason, it never came out right. The entire time, she thought I had an ulterior motive. Even though I released her from her slave contract, she acted like I had her under my financial control. It was either live with me or end up back in the slums. There was an undercurrent of worry that I'd eventually demand physical attention. Even though I was trying to at least give her a good life on each run, her fear and lack of comfort wore on me, so after around 60 loops, I quit doing it.

Next was Tizek. It was much harder than Lia because I ended up demonstrating how poor a lord I was without a mission or purpose. He was able to see though my façade and, within a month, he told me I was dishonorable and not worthy of following. It even happened on loops when we joined the Exterminator's Guild. He could tell I was listless and didn't want anything to do with me, so I gave up on him, too.

After that? I ended up wandering. I picked a direction out of town and just walked. I wanted to see how far I could get before something ate me, a bandit got me or when the apocalypse happened. I saw a lot of the countryside, small towns and got to better know how the rural people deal with monsters. I had no idea there were smaller Guilds dedicated to keeping frontier towns safe. They were basically the equivalent of franchises of the Exterminator's Guild. They used the name and followed the broader rules, but they otherwise were independent entities. I even found the town where Amis was living with his children as a woodshaper specializing in Guild weaponry. Layla had taken up apprenticing under her father to help with the business.

Even that got old. I never was able to make it to see a nexus since they were quite far away. The most I got was the edge of a weaker ley line where an Advancement 10 team tried to turn me away. Of course, I didn't listen and was promptly killed by a weird faceless figure with a kettle helmet, white skintight bodysuit and a black cape. It had razor claws, red eyes and moved in a way that made me think of a video game with poor latency. It sort of just skipped through reality and had an odd movement pattern. I had little time to study it while it was ripping my intestines out. I did notice it was disappointed I didn't scream and only observed my involuntary seppuku with a clinical detachment.

Now I was blazing myself on drugs to pass the time. How I specifically ended up in a branch with a missing clog? I have no idea. I just woke up like this. I checked my bag and found my stash had run out, as did my money.

My eyes drifted toward the castle, which I could see through the dead branches in the tree I was lying in. I flipped the castle the bird and shouted. "Fuck you, King Ormond! Fuck you for dragging me to this world!"

"Yea!" I heard a voice shout. "That rat can go die!"

"Hey! My father was a rat!"

"Oh, sorry about that. I didn't mean to insult your pa."

"Oh, no, he's a bastard. He went to get smokes and never came back. The rat-clan isn't that bad though."

"A rat-clan woman stole my purse last week!"

"Would you three shut up?"

Like a barking dog, I had triggered a shouting match which reached a crescendo before petering out when all the people participating got sore throats.

As I lay there, I noticed a strange distortion forming in the air a kilometer or so away. It was a subtle effect like a heat mirage in the desert. I was fascinated by what I was seeing. I realized without the castle as a backdrop, it was impossible to notice against the clear blue sky. The position of the sun indicated it was around 9Mor.

I stared at the thing and then it rocketed up into the sky silently and impacted in an empty spot where it dissipated into nothing. Everyone in town was none the wiser. It was by virtue I had climbed up on this branch in my stupor that I had the perfect vantage to see it happen. My eyes went wide. The impact point was where the portal will appear in two days.

My mouth fell open. I had it all wrong. Squidward didn't open the portal from his end. He was invited! At least that was my operating hypothesis, however much credence you can put into my addict head on the matter. I could have very well just been seeing an actual heat mirage. In 18 centigrade weather.

My eyes drifted down to see where it looked like it originated from. It was in the slums near what I recalled was an abandoned shopping district. Carefully, I made my way down the branch to get off the tree. I didn't want to lose my balance and loop back here again. It wasn't easy given I was dealing with a severe withdrawal from whatever it was I had burned my brain with.

I managed to get down to the street level with only losing half of my remaining health bar, which was already a third black from my drug abuse. My stamina bar was half black. I stumbled down the road toward my destination while the residents of the slums avoided me. I had built up a bad reputation on this loop for being absolutely disgusting. I'm sure the king wasn't happy with me giving the summoned heroes a bad name, assuming he even cared or remembered my existence.

I managed to make my way to the abandoned shopping center with only minimal breaks to vacate my stomach into a storm drain. I looked up at yet another dead tree building. I didn't know much of the history of the structure other than it was a wealthy person's attempt at building this world's equivalent of an indoor mall on cheap land he got in the slums. And like back at home, indoor malls just weren't popular anymore.

Now it was a massive tree with empty storefronts on multiple levels. When I wandered in, no one paid me much attention. It was a common place for the homeless and drug addicts to congregate. I wandered through the central promenade and down the wings. The interior was eerie with vines and standing water everywhere while I was assaulted by body odors rivaling my own from my fellow vagrants. A rotted wooden sculpture of a mall mascot dominated the central ground floor crossway.

I went up to each level and looked around. Nothing stuck out. There were just a bunch of people blitzed out of their minds sleeping in spaces which never had a tenant. I briefly wanted to check to see if they had a hit on them before shaking my head. No, not right now.

My wandering took me into a maintenance hall near the security station. Then I saw a door ajar in a wall. Inside was a set of stairs leading down, which I took since I had no other clues to work with.

Unlike the layout above, the tunnels below were a confusing maze. Magical lights installed way back then were still operating, which I found odd since they didn't persist that long. I figured I'd probably die down here from starvation if I wasn't going to end it myself tomorrow. I continued to wander aimlessly, staring into random rooms with functions I didn't know. I found a hatch leading further down. As I reached down to grab it, I heard a shout. "You! What are you doing down here?"

I turned and realized why the lights were still working. I saw four members of Gully Jack's gang coming toward me from down the hall. I gave them a friendly wave. "Hey guys. You see anyone odd down here? Maybe someone casting a big spell?"

When they saw me, they paused and turned to each other. One, a wolverine-clan woman, spoke. "The hero? And the disgusting one at that? Why are you down here?"

"You're not going to believe me, but I think someone is using Jack's territory for something terrible," I explained. As much as I didn't want to see Jack ever again, this was fortuitous. I needed Jack's help to scour the area for whoever cast that spell.

She rolled her eyes. "That doesn't narrow it down." The others laughed at the comment.

"They're planning to take over the building," I lied. That got their attention.

"Tell me the details," the woman demanded.

"I can't. I have to take this directly to Jack," I replied.

She crossed her arms and scowled. "Why?"

Time for another lie. Well, maybe it was the truth. "Because I'm broke and need more drugs. I know this is important for Jack, but the info is not free."

The woman snorted. "We can do that. I doubt you'd be able to pull anything with Jack in your state. You're a dud and it looks like you're barely walking. We'll need to hose you off first, you stink."

I shrugged. "Fine by me. Lead the way."

I let them lead me out of the basement area and back up to the street. It had been around 30 years my time since I last saw Gully Jack. It was still too soon as far as I was concerned. But I had to. I finally had another lead on how to stop everything and I'd do anything to follow it.