Evolution Island: Kill to Survive

A rotting corpse

The robed stranger was unaffected by Madeline’s threat. He approached her completely unarmed, as if to test her resolve.

Standing before Madeline, he opened his arms, almost welcomingly. His long red sleeves hung loosely from his skinny limbs.

“I cannot die, brave girl. Not in this game, anyway,” he breathed softly, with an air of resignation.

“Who are you? And why are you following us? What the hell do you want?” Madeline asked all her questions at once.

In response, the mysterious stranger pulled back his hood with his skinny fingers. Madeline could swear she saw his bones sticking out from underneath his shrivelled skin. She was unprepared for what was under that hood.

The stranger had the most grotesque face Madeline had ever seen. It made Isabella so scared that she hid behind her sister. The man had a wrinkled old face, besmirched with patches of purple. Under his eyes were bags of loose skin, charred at the corners and his eyelids were darkened to a shade of ageing grey. His head was bald and his dry scalp had maggots crawling out of it. His whole face was overgrown with puss filled boils, making him look a lot like a rotting old corpse of a diseased old man.

“This is who I am,” the man answered through his shrivelled old lips. He gently pulled up his right sleeve and showed them his emaciated right arm, which had bones sticking out through the rotting flesh and skin. His whole body had succumbed to the rot, except his dull gray eyes which still had some light left in them.

Seeing Isabella trembling in fear, the man backed away and covered his face again. “I did not mean to scare you. That’s why I came to you dressed in these robes. I only wanted to help.”

“Help?” Madeline burst out. “If you wanted to help, you wouldn’t have led us inside an active volcano. Zach is dead because of you. Don’t think that I’ll pity you for how you look. For all we know, you could be a necromancer or some god-damn cultist.”

“I am no such thing.”

“Then what the hell are you? You’re clearly a player, but you aren’t a part of the Merlin Alliance. So how the hell did you end up here?”

“This is not the avatar of Predator. The body you see before you belongs to an NPC.” The old man paused as a fit of coughing made him choke on his saliva. He was clearly too weak to even stand up straight. A viscous green liquid poured out of his mouth as he tried to continue. “I am not an NPC, but an actual person. I am also trapped in this world just like you. And I need your help to...to set things right.”

“I don’t believe a word you say,” Madeline responded. “For all we know, you could be one of Gilbert’s hired hands.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t come up clean when we first met.” The old man put his shrivelled hands on display again. “But you see I had my reasons. I tried asking the other team for help, but they were repulsed by my real appearance. And when they refused, I had to reach out to you. I am not on Gilbert’s payroll...not anymore.”

“Stop beating around the bush!” Madeline snapped. “Who are you?”

“I am Akira Minamoto, the one who created this technology. I...am responsible for this...all of this. I was too ambitious and didn’t know what disastrous consequences this could have in the wrong hands.”

“And now you’ve got our friend killed because of your selfishness. You wanted that gem so you could cure yourself, didn’t you?”

“I did not. There is no way to cure this body. The body of this NPC is programmed to rot away over the course of time. My only chance to escape this horrible fate is to get out of this world.”

“Then why the hell did you send us on a quest to find the gem?”

“I only wanted to help you. I knew it was the only way to save your Pyromancer friend. This island doesn’t have any save points. The Revival Gem is your only hope.”

“You can travel through portals. If you really wanted to help us, then why the hell did you retrieve the gem yourself?”

“Because I am too weak to fight, and I cannot interact with rare objects. Only players who have Predator avatars can do that. Please trust me. I speak nothing but the truth.”

“None of this matters now. I am not feeling generous enough to help the man who helped Gilbert complete this project. You deserve to suffer,” Madeline cut in sharply. Pointing her axe at him, she made it very clear that she didn’t want anything to do with him. “Zach died because of you. He is probably in a coma now. No amount of self-pity will bring him back.”

“I know I can’t undo my past mistakes, but I want to help you stop Gilbert.” The old man opened another portal on his left and pointed his bony fingers in that direction. “Your friend didn’t die inside that volcano.”

The girls quickly turned to see a figure emerging from that portal. It was Zach himself, shrouded in a blue mist. A few seconds later, the mist cleared away and they could clearly see his face.

“You’re okay!” Isabella cried out. “We were so worried about you.”

Zach smiled at her and breathed out a sigh of respite. “It was all thanks to Mr. Akira. He used his portal to teleport me out of the volcano moments before it erupted. He really is who he says he is.”

The surprise on Madeline's face was clear as daylight. It was as if she had just seen a ghost. "My Z-band showed that you were disconnected. I thought we couldn't save you. Where were you all this time?"

"I was with Mr. Akira. There was a glitch while using the portal because I was carrying that treasure chest. We ended up getting stuck in some kind of limbo. I'm guessing that's why it showed that I was disconnected."

“And what about the Revival Gem?” Madeline asked.

Zach pulled out the Treasure Chest from his inventory and placed it on the ground. “It is protected by a magic spell. Mr. Akira says we need to combine 4 different types of elemental attacks to get it open.”

“But you should not try to do it here. You have to return to a safe zone first,” the old man added. “You may not trust me, but you will need my help to defeat Gilbert. Only I know the secrets of this world. And I have to stop him before it’s too late. If we fail to put an end to this now, he will launch this game globally and even more people will become trapped in this world forever. He is trying to create a dangerous utopia.”

“We still don’t know much about you. I don’t feel particularly trusting today,” Madeline replied. “I let Gilbert fool me once, and you don’t seem all that different. You have to come clean about everything—your relationship with Gilbert, your involvement in this project and how you ended up inside that rotting corpse.”

The old man nodded, “I will tell you everything you need to know once we are in a safe zone. Gilbert knows you’ve met me and it’s not safe here in the open. Just give me one chance to explain myself; this is all I ask of you.”