Chapter 2: Chapter Two

CHAPTER TWO

Perseus woke from his trance. He swiveled his head to the edge of civilization. The forest rumbled and creaked, it felt like a rubber band pulled to its very limits, and with a groan it gave way and the band snapped.

Out of the thick roots a group of people came scrambling. At first Perseus thought they were humans, the rest of Athens hidden behind a thin wall of forest, the world hadn’t been scrambled after all, he thought for a second.

But then his eyes focused on their long, lithe features, the dirty white fur on their knees and on their shoulders, and on their elbows. The clawed paws instead of arms and feet and the large ears standing at attention, lagging behind them as they hopped and galloped over the short distance between the forest and where Perseus Stood. Their voices carried over with the wind. A Soft whisper, like the rustling of leaves, and in a language that at first sounded jumbled, broken, foreign. It morphed through weird mechanisms unknown to Perseus into words he could barely understand. Pleas they were.

By now others had noticed the galloping rabbit-human hybrids, Some more Human and others more Rabbit, Kirey yelped in surprise, Fiora ignored Nicholas for once and looked over. A dozen of the rabbit folk appeared from the gaps of the root floor of the forest and they were running, escaping from something. “Gabri!” Perseus shouted. They exchanged a look before they moved. Down the marble steps and onto the asphalt street. They rushed forth.

“Who are you?” Perseus waved his hand, calling the rabbit people over. The two front runners, a young man and a young woman with interesting features, like the sharpness of their ears, and the fact that they had four of them, distinguished them from the rest.

“Run! They’re coming! HIDE!” The young man at the front, dirty and stained, and scared out of his mind picked up even more speed and his whistling voice boiled up a pitch, the urgency clear as he motioned for his companion to catch up. Perseus stopped in his tracks. He jumped behind a car and inched backward as he followed the advice. No reason to ignore it. “They say to hide. Get back inside!” He shouted back to Diora, who had her eyes on Perseus’ actions, the only one not caught staring mindlessly at the foreign people that seemed more from Alice in Wonderland or some foreign animation, but instead on high alert.

She nodded and pulled Bisir by the hand. The brute was smart enough to follow. He quickly warned the rest before he entered the building once more.

And then it came. With a swipe of its long yet flat fingers, four, black, many jointed, it carved through the trunk of a hundred meter tall tree as if it was butter. The ancient organism fell to the ground without any resistance. Roots were torn apart and stepped on by those hands and by a whip-like tail so long and fast it blurred almost into invisibility.

From behind, and out of the shadows came the long face, nose with nostrils like tubes, wide and hollow, and with a plastic sheen on the white skin that covered its whole body. Sweaty and slimy, glistening under the midday sun with a sickly paleness. It’s teeth showing under his horse lips, wide plaques of rotten white, with not a hint of sharpness yet they caused sparks whenever they clacked onto each other.

The rabbit folk young and old were in a desperate dash away from it, they chanced upon the modern jungle and were coming straight for Perseus and Gabriel.

They were ducked behind a Car each, on opposite sides of the streets. The newcomers came close and then dispersed, running to any and all directions, climbing walls up to the roof, jumping over two floor homes with agility and acrobatics that seemed impossible.

But the monster was a straight edged type of guy. It rushed in a line and Perseus cursed under his breath as it seemed about ready to barrel through the whole street. It flattened cars as it came, it paid no heed to the cries of scared or dying humans that it passed by, and there were a lot of them, they had just mostly run inside or stayed in their cars, cars which were nothing more than pancakes metal and flesh now.

“FUCK!” Perseus cursed as the two bunny people with four ears instead of two passed by them. “Don’t just bring it here. Stand and fight!” he shouted at them and moved. He crouch walked beside the parked cars and rushed straight for the monstrosity. It towered over him and its moved its face like a hound dog, it’s small beady eyes, two small useless, crystal black, point on its head. Under its eyebrows that looked like bears of white hairs. Long Asian style.

Perseus felt fear and anxiety peak in him as a paw crashed right in front of him. He close his eyes, to not let any of the flying shards of glass blind him, and then rolled in, blind.

Suddenly the warmth of the sun touched him no more. “That guy is crazy!” Came the soft whisper of amazement from the young Rabbit man, as Perseus opened his eyes and saw he was under the beast, it must have been 10 meters long with its tail, which it let drag behind. Without a thought in his mind he took out his bread knife, it was long enough for him to pick up speed, run across the street and push it up. With a soft squelch the knife dug into its skin without much resistance. And with a hand held pointing to the skies, or in this case, the belly of the beast, he run to the other side as it opened up and blue blood washed over him and behind him, organs, most probably, its intestines stretched out of the wound and flopped towards the ground.

Perseus could not help but laugh at the ease of it, bewilderment clouding his judgment. “DUCK!” Screamed Gabriel and Perseus followed. Jumping to the ground at the same moment as the tail had come piercing forth at where he had been. The whistle of the boiling kettle nearly burst Perseus’ eardrums as he crawled in between two cars, attempting to hide once more.

Yet he would find that as he had fallen, his had scraped open his chin and palms. With a nose like that, there was no way the monster wouldn’t be able to tell where he was. As if its stomach being cut open did not matter it moved, one palm digging into the building across, its face stared towards Perseus and its tail grabbed him like a python slithering around him to crush his every bone.

You are reading story World Gauntlet – A LitRPG Apocalypse at novel35.com

He was lifted off the ground like a doll. “Oh oh…” Perseus smiled at a distraught Gabriel as he passed over him, dangling upside down in the air. He pulled with his abs and turned around. He held the knife as if it was a gun. “Please, I say don’t want trouble.” He shouted with his best Jackie Chan voice and then was flung back like an annoying fly, through the glass doors of the building he had just left a few minutes ago. He tumbled and broke against the hard floor. People and desks and other things which shattered his bones and claimed life from him with every thump were carried along as screams broke out around him. Not that he could hear them.

What with his skull being cracked open and half his brain standing untangled outside. A little leak.

Gabriel did not scream, nor did he act the fool. He stayed low as the Monster finally changed its target. It thumped to the earth, the asphalt cracking and bending under its weight. It bend down its massive four meter tall frame and stuck its nose inside the broken glass doorway it had just sent Perseus flying through. It’s jaw moved and it cackled and chattered. It laughed in apparent glee at how juicy a meal it smelled inside there.

And this was the chance Gabriel took. He rushed forth, with a piece of a broken car in hand. “Please, work with me!” he shouted to the missing duo of rabbit folk as he pierced its tail with the sharp steel piece. And he kept going, passing the piece through the broken windshield of a car before sliding under the thrashing tail and bending the metal piece around. He felt his hands tears as the tail lifted the car up slow. The monster jolted its head, crushing the concrete overhang to the building entrance, turning around to look at its tail in bewilderment, why was it so heavy?

It wouldn’t get to have another thought as from below a very daring father with dark skin and stern face would rush forth, take large shard of glass and puncture through the monsters neck. “AAAGH!” Bisir screamed in effort as he moved his hand through the soft, gelatin like flesh, and he was drowned out in blue blood as its neck flopped open.

And from above the two rabbits finally joined. The descended, their legs dug into the wall of the building as they sprinted down its side, their paws extended forward and their maws wide open. The spun around and pierced through its neck. A crack sounded out as its spine was shattered and the two rabbits chewed and sawed its head off its neck in one swift, clean, combo move.

The monster fell down, its head crashed Bisir to the ground and it was dead.

Perseus twitched. Still alive he felt some type of warmth enter his body, or his soul, whatever it was he felt, and he knew this was his chance. He latched onto it and placed into his level. He knew it would work, he just felt it. “Oh… I’m a real boy!” He cried as he understood coherent though returned to him. He scrambled to stand and fell back down before trying once more, this time his body actually moved as it should and he rushed out the building. He stopped just a second to help Bisir from under the head that had crushed his lungs. He was dying, but he would know what to do.

“Look! Geppetto, I’m a real boy!” He Jumped and hugged Gabriel, tackling him to the ground as the man had not her leveled up like him, it seemed he had torn more than the tendons on his wrists.

He writhed in pain under Perseus. “Get off me Pinocchio! You’re killing… me.” He wept under the mind numbing pain.

“Oh yeah. You should level. You’ll be peachy in a second.” Perseus stood and dusted off his clothes. He left Grabiel to his own devices and moved back, he walked along the body of the monster, after poking it a few times to check it was truly dead. Missing head or not you didn’t really know.

“Heya, I’m Perseus. Human of the age 24 and really not looking forward to being part of your world and the World Gauntlet.” He introduced himself to the two beast people. They had been busy cutting off two pink crystals that jutted out of the monsters head, atop its skull and a little back.

“Hello Human. Thank you for you help. You have been very brave facing a Garou on your own, even if it’s a young one.” The word came out in a language he understood yet their mouths moved in a different manner entirely. Perseus shrugged it off. “I am Agon, and this is my Twin sister, Ilyne.”

“A pleasure.” Perseus grinned as he took hold of Ilyne’s paw and bent down to kiss it. She giggled at his weird and unfamiliar antics, not bothered at all. Diora, still holding onto her baby, who had been checking Bisir for injuries after he had healed using his Level up snorted with derision.

“Now, a thought popped into my head. But, was this whole ordeal, with you and your people running away. A trap? Were you hunting?” Perseus prodded. Because to him, juvenile or not, the Rabbit people were too numerous and too strong to be threatened to a hasty retreat by the Garou, as Agon had called it.

“You would be mostly right.” Agon said and move, He brought a bone whistle hanging from his neck to his mouth and called in a frequency Perseus could not pick up. “For now, we should get somewhere further away from this Corpse. All humans should evacuate as they don’t know how to deal with the coming threats. Neither its Parents, nor the Gurglings.” Agon shivered as he spoke of the latter.

Perseus found himself burning with curiosity, about a lot of things as he stared at the young man, younger than him, and his sister, which was a bombshell to say the least. If that made him a furry then so be it!

You can find story with these keywords: World Gauntlet – A LitRPG Apocalypse, Read World Gauntlet – A LitRPG Apocalypse, World Gauntlet – A LitRPG Apocalypse novel, World Gauntlet – A LitRPG Apocalypse book, World Gauntlet – A LitRPG Apocalypse story, World Gauntlet – A LitRPG Apocalypse full, World Gauntlet – A LitRPG Apocalypse Latest Chapter