Chapter Text
I dipped my head low as the sun burned overhead in the clear blue sky; my shirt was soaked in water and hung over my head instead of my torso. Drops of sweat rolled down my body in little rivulets, and my body screamed for something to cool it down. Nonetheless, I trudged forward on the humid, breezeless jungle trail.
Yet, looking to my right, I could see a glistening city of towering glass skyscrapers. Sleek, angular, smooth. The concrete and asphalt roads bustled with activity, and cars and buses moved seamlessly between each other like clockwork. Beyond even that, you could watch the glimmering blue ocean and the islands scattered beyond them. A vast collection of cargo ships split the waves in front of them, to and fro from the port and distant countries.
Through the blistering heat, I walked with a grin on my face. Even after three years of living here, Hong Kong never ceased to give me a sense of awe at the sheer variety of life here, from the mechanical and industrial order of the factories, ports, and airports to the lush mountain forests surrounding them.
However, my view from the top of the trail was soon interrupted; when I walked back under the forest canopy,
I frowned and bowed my head to look back down at the ground and watch for tripping hazards. I adjusted my soaked shirt on my head; at least I had some shade in this area.
My thoughts were wandering again. My novels and short stories weren't going to plan themselves after all. My mind was occupied with a fantasy ocean world, and I didn't notice that the shadows of the forest floor were growing darker and longer, becoming pitch-black. They were tendrils of oblivion, swallowing the world around me.
I blinked, my train of thought and imagination having been lost. I jumped when I realized the darkest voids had swallowed everything around me.
I swallowed, and my knees began to shake. The soaked t-shirt draped around my head like a makeshift cape suddenly became cold without the dominating light of Hong Kong's tropical sun.
My heart began racing, and I spun around in my new environment, taking it all in. What was this? Had I died? I didn't think heatstroke set in that quickly, and I hadn't eaten anything toxic... Did a heavy branch or rock from the cliff ledge above me fall on my head? That was also more than possible.
Reality, nonetheless set in for m, when something came from the gloom.
An appendage, a hand, crawled out from some unseen crevice in the abyss. Its skin was like dried and cracked cement, with faded blood and rotting bone visible in the gashes. I could smell things I'd never smelled before. There was decay and putrescence, but also more things that made me stiff and aching, guilty and ashamed. It was the stench of a concept, a horror of demonic punishment and glee that my brain vehemently rejected.
I could taste something metallic and could feel the warmth of my blood running down my face, but I was suffocating. I was paralyzed. I had traveled too much. I was blind. I had seen too much. I was deaf. I had heard too much. I was feeling the agony of uncountable tortured souls: children and elderly, warriors and cowards, poor and rich. I was all of the suffering people in the world, and all were equal before the arrival of my master.
I knelt against my will and looked up to see the rest of it emerge.
It was an ugly, sneering thing. A multitude of hands, just like the one that greeted me, protruded like branches from its cancerous, bloated tree trunk of a body, which was a mural of bloody tears and scars, with yet more blackened shards of bone emerging from its back and shoulders. Murky, blood-red eyes were scattered across its form, staring blankly. It was an altar to pain, the sensation, and the spread.
It knelt over me, and without a mouth, it spoke to me with dozens of gnashing, garbled, and muttering voices recombining into words I recognized.
"Well, well, another one then?" it asked, its empty face distending and stretching into a savage grin of dagger-like teeth.
"W-what?" I soon choked on my words, the dripping blood on my face having flowed into my mouth.
It only laughed, the sound of which seemed to gnaw and grope my heart and bones. "I suppose it doesn't matter too much," it said. "You are my plaything, after all. All you need to know is that you will entertain me, my dear Marc Lynn. And there is no better entertainment than that which your species has created."
It waved one of its many hands, and a vortex of glowing red light appeared.
————————————————————————————————————————
"You aren't getting away this time," the blue war machine huffed in the audio transmission. It stared through its single ocular at its rival. The subspatial orange wings on the war machine's back fluttered slightly as it expended stolen energy to repair them to prepare for the pursuit automatically.
The sandstone arena it stood in was pockmarked with charred surfaces, craters, and debris. Its opponent, a red, heavier, more armored copy of itself, had broken through the wall. That robot's ocular turned to look behind at the blue machine, only sending back the impression of a smirk before jumping through the gaping hole.
The blue machine designated V1, leaped into action, with micro-rockets roaring to propel itself in a dash for the chase against its nemesis, V2.
They both exited and immediately began sliding down the side of the colossal pyramid in the greed layer of hell. The battle may have begun inside one of humanity's monuments, but it would end at the bottom no matter who was the victor.
V1 let loose with a coil pistol, metal particulates accelerating beyond hyper-sonic to become lethal, and V2 retaliated with a volley of plasma fire.
The two robots shot at each other as they continued sliding down, but V1 could maneuver on their inclined battlefield. V2's frame, while durable, couldn't risk the increased friction of movement and was forced to stay in a roughly straight line.
The result was inevitable, and after a series of high-powered bullets, detonations, and volleys of electrical power, V2 was launched off the pyramid in one final burst of plasma. It tumbled down to the ground helplessly.
V1 let loose another dash of speed to reach the golden, sandy bottom of the pyramid just before V2 splattered. It was eager to claim its prize of energy-rich blood and compatible machine parts.
Yet as it adroitly dropped down and landed, a swirling red energy vortex appeared at the precise end of V2's arc. V1's moved to intercept and earn its kill, but V2's falling body hit the portal first and was promptly swallowed before it disappeared.
V1 quietly stared at the spot where its enemy disappeared before moving on in a burst of speed. It still needed more blood.
————————————————————————————————————————
My eyes were glued firmly to the portal, and despite the overwhelming sense of wrongness and domination that was flooding my mind, I was still surprised when V2 from Ultrakill tumbled into the empty void. It was honest, a dull red coat of paint over a rugged peace-keeper robot with a camera-like head and sharp, angular wings. However, it was sparking and smoking and dented in a few places.
"Wha-what?" I managed to squeak out quietly.
The horror to my left chuckled again, and I winced as it spoke, "You didn't think I would leave you without some advantages, did you?"
His many hands wrapped around me, and I was about to scream before another one covered my mouth and snapped my jaw shut. He carried me over to the damaged robot, which looked up at us with a tired and cracked camera-like eye as a red liquid leaked from its insides.
"Injured," the horror mused. "Makes this easier for me." He threw my helpless body on top of the robot, and in the blink of an eye, I suddenly felt nothing but the information in my brain, and I looked up through a damaged camera to see the being of hateful flesh staring down at me.
"By the way Marc Lynn, My name is Eschaton." It leaned down with another twisted smile and said, "Now go forth."
Everything faded to black.
————————————————————————————————————————
When my body came online, I instantly noted that all my previous damage had been repaired. The second thing I said was the fusion of two minds, one robotic and coldly psychopathic, the other a young human man with dreams and memories of the other.
"Fuck me..." I thought to myself. "That... Thing fused me with V2 from Ultrakill?!"
I climbed to my feet; the movement felt natural, but I didn't actually... Feel anything; I didn't have any sensation in it or anywhere in my body. Instead, I had a continued relay of information from my body straight to my brain. Instead of feeling what was happening around me and to me, I simply knew.
I turned on my camera eye (which my V2 memory reminded me was called an ocular,) and I looked at the world around me.
It was dark out, with no sun in the sky, and harsh winds were buffeting a forest of coniferous trees that towered over me. Snow fell gently from dark clouds in the sky, building an immense icy layer on the ground and the branches of the trees.
The sky was different here; two moons orbited above the skies; one was larger, with rings that seemed to twinkle. While the other was smaller and buffeted with craters comparable to our moon.
Neither I nor V2 had any knowledge/memory in astronomy, but we were both pretty sure that the constellations above didn't match those of Earth.
A sense of exasperation built up within me as I began to recognize the environment I was in.
"Murder Drones... Seriously?"
I met an eldritch being beyond my comprehension, whom I could scarcely remember beyond him being terror incarnate, that had a name invoking the divine apocalypse, and he dumped me into a cross-over portal fantasy straight out of fanfiction.
"Ridiculous," and V2 seemed to agree, though since we shared memories now, it knew there was almost no blood on Copper-9 and was mostly losing its mind over that.
I eyed our energy reserves, and it was 100%, so it seemed Eschaton was interested enough to give us some leeway before shit hit the fan.
I took a deep breath and crouched. I had to summon forward some of V2's experience. I broke into a sprint at first, my heavy metal body crushed the snow under my weight, then I jumped slightly onto my back, let my momentum carry me forward a little bit, then activated the micro-rockets on my back just before I hit the ground.
Suddenly, I was smoothly sliding at top speed across the packed snow. I could even weave between the trees a little bit with how smooth and soft the snow was.
I could barely see the dark outline of towering structures in the distance, with cables drifting gently in the wind. I slid towards them with post-haste.
I could think about the implications of my isekai later, right now. I needed a way to survive long-term.