494 Master of Rear-Entry

The single most important fucking information you will gain in your life is what you can sell your ass for and what it takes to buy someone else's ass.

See, the ass is a precious thing. It's a vulnerable, fragile hole. And I know this because my ass has been obliterated several times over, and you could see me on that. It's while your ass is getting destroyed that you learn its true value, and you understand the market value of all asses to come.

See, there's a formula here, right? It's desperation level × value of the thing someone wants. You multiply that, divide by a person's individual power + their own ego. It's never ×, right? Never ×. Ego, you gotta + it because the ego is plenty big on itself or usually too small to matter.

Now, you put that equation in your head, and you consider what you have to offer and how much you value your own ass. If you can correctly gauge this every single time, you will be a successful businessman in Integration, and I rea-fucking-ssure you that is all you need. That, and a small army, a lot of skills, the willingness to run at the drop of a hat, a disgusting amount of luck, and an overwhelming number of benefactors who you owe money to, so they don't want your ass being filled by someone else's fist before they get a turn. That's right. Your ass needs to be insured, and it needs to owe multiple major people money so that you get collected upon by multiple major powers at the same time.

Now listen up, this is another theorem from your Uncle Realmrunner. This theorem is called the Ass Paradox Protection Clause. But keeping to the theme of my lesson, if you want to learn about these techniques, I'm going to need you to fork over some more mith…

—The Realmrunner

494

Master of Rear-Entry

“Is he dead?” Maria whispered. “Please tell me he's dead.”

“Okay. He's dead, sister. Capital-D dead.” The Breaker’s grin—and the fact that Maria wasn’t blind—indicated the bold-faced nature of his lie. Across from them, the Realmrunner spasmed and gasped as his lungs inflated and deflated with over-excited breaths of post-capitalistic bliss.

The conversation had started degenerating and took a straight plunge down the deepest gutters of debauchery. The worst part was how there was no actual sex being discussed beyond all the fetid words tumbling out from the Realmrunner's lips. Money was his lubricant, his aphrodisiac, his everything.

The very promise that he would be given new trade lanes and the Challenger's protection, along with an opportunity to resupply his stocks from what the orcs had raided and claimed as loot across a thousand different worlds, caused him to go near catatonic.

Maria saw several rats be bisected by a jet of hyper-heated liquid approaching the temperatures of a red dwarf’s core and the velocity of a rail gun. She didn't want to think about what the projectile actually was, and so she didn't. A feat of considerable mental discipline that she managed to induce such a moment of ignorance upon herself.

Still, it wasn't salvation enough. Her Harbinger soothed her, whispered sweet nothings to reinforce her flagging will. She hated being here. She hated this place, she hated the Breaker for bringing her here, and she especially hated the Realmrunner. So far, despite all the former’s promises, despite all that was being offered, she didn't see the purpose of the Realmrunner, how he could get them inside the Gate and turn the tide of an entire war.

To her, he remained a strange deviant of an ogre-goblin, and nothing more.

“Yet there is one thing to consider. He has escaped the grasp of Chorus time and time again. He's been a fugitive longer than almost anyone, and the Myths and Transcendents who would profit from his demise have been denied their due. Colonized Integration has stayed colonized for eons. To exist as a civilized federation of states in the face of the System is a symbol of power, and for him to avoid that symbol of power means something. Whether it indicates shame on the part of the Farwalkers or more so the Realmrunner's hidden power remains to be seen.”

Thus far, even if she accepted that any such power existed in the Realmrunner, Maria couldn't glean its existence. The loathsome Pathbearer lay half-draped upon his seat, his tongue lolling, drool gliding down both edges of his bottom lip, cascading along his nonexistent neck to stain the topside of his apparel. If there was one thing she was impressed by, it was how he hadn't fallen off his chair yet.

His body was a jungle of sweltering heat, caused internally by inflammation, suffering externally from heat flashes that danced across his skin. His stubby fingers were spasming, his muscles were cramping, his eyes were rolling. He was the definition of someone cast beyond the abyss of bliss, and drifting upon that maelstrom was a man battered by the waves of pleasure that visited themselves upon him in cataclysmic paroxysms of climax. At some point, the ogre-goblin began choking on his own tongue, and that was what drew him back to reality. Nothing else but a mere auto-asphyxiation, done without rope or the aid of his hand, just by his saliva and that extraordinarily long length of tissue hidden within his mouth. His eyes slotted back into place, but they were alight with a new gleam of avarice—a gleam of avarice, a literal sign of coinage flashing at the center of his irises.

Few people embodied the idea of greed and amorality as much as the Realmrunner. For he existed beyond the borderline, just as he did in the last—more caricature than person.

Releasing a chain of wet coughs, he righted himself in the seat before something wet slapped down on the ground. His head dipped, and he let out a husky chuckle. "Ah, man, really got those ratfolk with my meat-blaster that time, huh?" He reached down, scooped up dripping chunks of dead bodies that had been stained by a particularly murky color gradient of gossamer. Once more, Maria forced herself to ignore how disturbing the mixture of vile hues looked in the light.

“Alright, Breaker. Seeing as those tasteful words you sang to me got me lubricating and lactating, I'm gonna use this noggin of mine.” The Realmrunner stopped talking and swallowed before stabbing at his right temple with a pointed index finger and working it like a drill. “To get into that Gate and get at those tasty little morsels of ours, we'll use… AH! They're not gonna see this coming. They're not gonna see this coming at all. In fact, I think I might have got a few bits of missing product that wandered their way into that Gate.”

“Missing product?” Maria repeated, seeking clarification with more than a measure of impatience.

“Slaves, bitch! Slaves! In fact, I think I might have a slave daughter or something in there. I don't know, frankly. In my younger days, I used to do this thing where I'd like, line a bunch of slaves up, and blast them up and down with the hose. You know, slave baby farm type shit. It turns out a lot of people didn't like that, and so I stopped doing that, but mainly because I kinda started finding a lot of slaves real ugly—you know, it's kinda hard to get it up when you realize the lacking economic value of the one in front of you. Also, babies don’t get levels, and most of them are dogshit; fucking little fuckers die if your nippy isn’t nutritious enough. I found that out the ugly way.”

“One sympathizes, brother,” the Breaker lied, the sorrowful frown on his face almost comically disingenuous. “One really does.”

“Yeah, well, you live and learn. Ah, at least I live and learn. Not the kids, though. Most of them starve to death. Except for the ones who don't. Actually, come to think of it, the ones who don't really sell for something. In my case, see, they really became something. I guess that's another message: You gotta have the nature to be nurtured, especially as a slave baby, and if you have the nature to be nurtured by me, then maybe you just might make a dad proud up to it. Ah, what the fuck am I even talking about? Alright, so, getting you clowns into that Gate’s going to be like cucking a baby out of some cake.”

“Why would one cuck a baby?” Maria said, tone flat and glare unblinking. She was approaching the end of her rope now. If he didn't add some substance to his miserable, disgusting style, then she would kill him. She would kill him, and she would try to finish throttling the Breaker, as she had been prevented from doing earlier to appease the Challenger. “Why are you saying any of these things without providing us any information? I have been sitting here, Realmrunner, for what feels to my spirit like eons. I have been watching you conduct this asinine performance—let's call it that—for literal hours, and I think I am owed some amount of competence on your end. Some level of reassurance.”

Rather than being offended, the Realmrunner began oinking. Her eyelid started twitching, but then she realized he hadn't lost his mind completely, but was actually letting out a series of chortles. Smoothly, he reached into his outermost right pocket, one that she hadn't noticed was there before because it was clamped shut by such a congealment of crusty white grime. As he scratched it off and it dissolved in the air, she reminded herself not to breathe for the next hour at least.

The Realmrunner went rummaging through the various coinage and other small trinkets stored in that relatively shallow pocket. There was Dimensionality at play, of course, but she had faced tricks like that before in her time under the First Blood and during her Excaliburization. Then, finally, the Realmrunner let out a high hum and pulled out a peculiar device. It looked like a pocketwatch—two clocks spinning against one another: two hands snapping and clicking in tandem. As one tilted clockwise, the other went counter, and there emanated a golden glow from the mechanics that formed the core. A gleaming light lit the gears there, a subtle glow of Chronomancy, but something else besides. The temporal matter was edged with incandescence; something divine had conferred a portion of its significance upon this instrument.

“So, girl, when the Breaker told me that the Deathless and your other nuisances have a gateway connected to the Outside, and one of them's got this Outsider shit going on, I knew they were fucked. See, you don't want to go that way. Nothing good's waiting for you out there. Bunch of people think they're gonna escape the System by becoming Eldritch and all that.” The Realmrunner shook his head and tutted. “It's stupid. The System isn't gonna let you go. On the other hand, the periphery is mighty useful for me. See, I've run the Outside. I've used its fucked-up creatures to hide my movements, and more importantly, it's easy to lose those Farwalker fucks when you're going places without maps.”

He kicked his legs up and planted both shoes, drenched in what seemed to be pale white sludge, in front of Maria. The bottom sole of his shoe had been worn through, and she saw a mess of dirty toe pads that were currently being manicured by in-shoe cockroaches. It seemed like he had all manner of vermin helping him, maintaining his wretched form. “Of course, if they don't have a map, you usually don't have one either. I had to learn how to run that the classic way: exploiting the routes taken by the known Eldritch fucks out there—”

The Breaker interrupted their host’s rambling with a loud click of his tongue. “Oh, come on, brother, it's not right to lie to a lady.” There was a broad grin on his face, and the Realmrunner scowled at the one who'd dared to pop his bubble of mystique.

“Fuck you! I'm not lying. I did run those routes. I did follow those things. I had those goddamn cocksuckers licking up the sweat crust between my wrinkled folds! I had them sniffling me like I'm—”

“Before that,” the Breaker interrupted again, halting another tirade in its tracks. “Runner. You let her know about what you have. You tell her so that she gets why we're here speaking to you at all.”

The Realmrunner grumbled something unintelligible under his breath, rolled his eyes, raised his pocketwatch—and squeezed it. A connective snap went through the machinery. Both clockhands stopped tilting.

And reality halted.

If Maria still possessed the ability to blink, she would have.

She hadn't even caught the slightest glimpse of the Languor spell activating. In less than an instant, her Harbinger’s Legendary Chronomancy had been overwhelmed completely and utterly, without even the most infinitesimal chance of resisting.

The subtle glow of incandescence she'd sensed before rose to a full conflagration, clasping everything in a stifling grip. The golden mana that ebbed out from the device, overcharged with power flowing over from somewhere else, from something else, was utterly undeniable, pressing down on the world enough weight to grind greater dimensions to a halt.

The story you're reading was pirated. The real thing, kept up to date by the author, is waiting where it was originally posted.

Maria could still perceive what was happening, but she knew that this was not thanks to her own power granting her a measure of resistance, and instead something granted to her on purpose.

She deduced such partly due to being aware of her own limitations, and partly from how the Realmrunner’s shit-eating grin was aimed right at her. His teeth were stained and foul yet utterly bright where they counted.

While Maria and the Breaker sat frozen, the Realmrunner slowly leaned over the table, his stomach pushing against the edge on his side as he strained to close the distance without bothering to stand up. The foulness of his breath assaulted her nostrils as he brought his malformed face right in front of hers. His grin stretched wider and wider as he stared into her eyes, her expression an awkward thing of a scowl caught half-blinking by the sudden stoppage of time. He reached up with his fetid hand and grabbed her chin with one hand, pushing her cheeks together with his index finger and thumb, like a nobleman handling an uppity servant.

"You wanna know a secret about me, missy?” he asked, the grin never leaving his face. “See, the name might've been giving you a false impression. My secret’s not that I know how to run. It's not that I'm really committed to running, even. I spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to get away with stuff, but I just can't help myself. I never get away with things that many times in a row, and I keep losing everything I gained, because, I mean, what the fuck’s the point, right? What's the point: stay rich and don't run anymore? Stay rich and stop taking scores? Stay rich and stop hurting people and doing whatever I want whenever the fuck I want?” He sneered and snorted loudly, as if the mere concept was half absurd, half contemptible. “What kinda life is that?"

He let go of her face and tossed himself back in his chair. It tilted on its axis, threatening to topple fully over, yet by the barest of margins it remained closer to stasis than collapse, and he was perfectly perched on that groaning mass of furniture. Once more, he showed her his rotted shoes and the roach serfs working with him as he continued his personal thesis with his legs crossed on the table.

“That's no life at all. I'm still a Pathbearer. I'm a Pathbearer who wants and trades, who wants to go somewhere and do shit. If I see some lemons, I'm gonna take those lemons. I'm gonna shove those lemons up your ass. And I'm gonna squeeze your ass together until ass-nectar lemonade comes out. Why? Because I don't mind the ass part of the nectar, so long as you feel bad about the lemonade burning your ripped-up folds! That's who I am! I'M THE MOTHERFUCKING REALMRUNNER, BITCH! And I'm willing to go down as that in this life, and every other fucking life!”

The expression on his face turned almost boar-like in feral arrogance. “No one can have me. No one’s ever gonna get me. But I’m gonna have everything; I’m gonna fucking steal everything. Chorus almost had more times than I can remember. That one time, they finally cornered me on this world you've never heard of. It was an ass-clenching pickle if you've ever seen one. You gotta imagine how desperate I was. But then, just as I was about to kiss my slave daughters and slave husbands and slave wives goodbye and blow us all up to kingdom come, because I'm sure as shit not letting anyone take my stuff as taxable, or loose, or—" he coughed amidst his rant, almost gagging, "—evidence for my crimes in the aftermath, I'm just going to turn them to molten slag! But then, guess what. Guess what happened.”

As Maria continued to stare, as frozen as before, he held his stubby little arms up in the closest gesture he could muster to glorying before a moment of true faith. “I found salvation. I gambled, and I got touched and blessed because the house—and the biggest dogs beneath the roof—know that I am special. They know that the Realmrunner is a five-star fucking Pathbearer! A once-in-a-reality wonder! Me, and no one else!”

Then he suddenly paused, and the expression of religious fervor faded, exchanged for one of indignation as he glared down upon his clashing watch. “Of course, this little thing comes with a bit more than just benefits. And sometimes, those benefits don’t even work right. Like JUST RECENTLY! The fuck's wrong with you?!” He started shaking the device aggressively. “I thought we had a deal! How could you let them take everything from me? That last run! Those weren't even Transcendents! Not even fucking Myths! You had a bunch of Legends running me out of town! They beat my ass! They took one of my ass cheeks! I had to regrow that! You wanna know how valuable my ass cheek is? If my person is a valid fraction of my entire economic worth, that ass cheek is worth more than 99% of known Legendary Ambient Threshold Worlds in Integration put together! FUCK!”

The Realmrunner took a long breath, and outside there came bashing at the door again, as Maria noticed, to her rising disbelief, that the ostrich-daughter-maid of the Realmrunner was apparently either excluded from the divinely-empowered Languor spell as well, or somehow immune to it.

“It's all fucking bullshit. Don't accept any deals with random High Gods. They're ass. Everything they do is ass. I get hidden, but only barely! It's like getting a net you wear around yourself to protect you from mosquitoes, except it still has your massive schlong exposed! Your monster-sized schlong is dragging along the ground, and they're just sucking your shit, and NOT IN THE WAY YOU WANNA! You know what it's like to have a monster-sized schlong that's been bitten a thousand times over by mosquitoes? You know what it's like to angle that schlong so that you could rub all parts of it along the ground using the friction to get rid of the itch? What's it like when that doesn't fucking work because—”

It was at this moment, on the edge of a conniption, that the Realmrunner seemed to realize that Maria most likely wouldn't know, because she was female and likely wasn't of the variety that had experimented with growing male genitalia on themselves. He blinked twice as he realized he'd lost the plot somewhere along his tirade. “Ah, fuck it. You look dumb anyway. You wouldn't know what it's like. You don't have the intellectual capacity to have a meat like mine. The intelligence of my… girth is beyond you.”

Then, with the casualness of someone remembering to pull up their trouser zipper, he clicked the temporal construct once more and allowed time to resume its fundamental pace. As the Breaker beside her seemed to still be slightly befuddled by the Realmrunner’s last line, even his prodigious resistance to non-sequiturs and nonsense declarations having been pushed to the limit, Maria wondered what might happen if her master were to be confronted with this device.

She truly wasn't certain. Yes, Melaia was but a Legendary Pathbearer, but her legend held more depth than a great many Myths, and there was an enlightenment to be held in weakness that escaped those who grew too powerful before their time. The thought struck Maria as absurd idol-worship, the kind a student would bestow upon their master. And yet…

“Absurdity is what defines us as Pathbearers. All of us, ridiculous.”

As the words of her Harbinger echoed, the Realmrunner hopped off his chair and circled around the table. Along the way, he planted an extended claw through the wood, splintering it as he dragged his foot along. She realized there was no significance to the action: no meaning, nothing beyond a random urge or tick. He didn't think as he did, and somehow it worked out for him, repeatedly, time and time again. Perhaps even before he secured such a potent treasure, he had been protected by natural instinct, by sheer fortune, and it led them here and now to collide. Her with all her focus and purpose, him with his. Well, there wasn't much she could say in his favor, so she would call it his fate.

“So, again, getting back on topic, I ran those routes, and since they're still in the near Outside, we're going to be able to surprise them, especially since they won't see me coming. Especially since they won't be able to guess where I am with this little thing here.” He jiggled the pocketwatch with a grin. “What we need is for them to keep the doors open. We need them to be confused. You're gonna tell me exactly which part of the Outside they're in, which Outsiders they're associated with. Then we find a way to cuck them first, and after we cuck them, we wait. We wait until the doors open, and then we ram the lemons up their asses. Classic rear-entry maneuver. They won't see any of this shit coming. Hell, they won't even be able to shit when I'm done.”

The Realmrunner clicked his heels together—and that caused a spurt of roaches to tumble out just as his feet came down, trapping them again. “Yeah, if you got the stuff, I got the way, and together… together there just might be some fucking profit to be made. Oh, and hey, Breaker.”

“Hm?”

“You tell that Challenger of yours there’s one more thing we need.”

“And what's that?”

“My own arrangement still comes first. The Deathless is mine. That Starhawk’s Roland fucker is mine. His Kid-Paragon’s mine. And the Seeker—eh, I guess she can be collateral. Stomp on her. Set her on fire. Eat her. Whatever—I’m good without that one.”

“Oh?” The Breaker hummed, curious. “Any reason why you’re willing to give up on her?”

The Realmrunner shot Maria a look and sighed. “I don’t know. Something about tall, pasty elven kids just don’t do it for me no more. That, and she’s going Outsider. You don’t keep those as pets. You get rid of them—because there’s only one future waiting for Pathbearers drifting toward the void, and there’s less than no profit in it. But you know what? That’s neither ass nor cock about a cuck—is that a fucking saying? Well, it is now! But I’ve done this long enough to know that the Outsiders aren’t things to sell and more boils along your assfolds to pop!”

A series of chuckles escaped him as he walked from left to right, not actually aiming for anything. “So, don't you all worry. Give Uncle Realmrunner a little bit. Give me a couple of days, and I'll find you a way. I'll chart you a course through the Outside. I'll give you a rear-entry method of bursting into that Gate. We're gonna fuck our way through that Stranger's Garden. We're gonna fuck our way through what's left of the Dreamtaker's shithole. We're gonna get in there. You're gonna get in there. And when we do…”

He slammed his stubby hands together, creating a loud plop rather than a formidable shockwave. He tried three more times before giving up entirely, muttering an excuse about how his hands were still sticky. “This shit is going to be beautiful, but leading up to that, I'm going to need a couple thousand, Breaker. Frankly, if you have a few million to spare, I'd ask them all to come over. This is going to take some trial and error, and I need you to understand that I don't do trial and error using myself. You fucking get it?”

“I most certainly do, brother.” The Breaker smiled. “We have plenty of Adepts and suicide junkies that are looking for another go around the reincarnation cycle. I'm sure something can be arranged.”

“Well then, you and I are gonna be golden, pony boy. Golden like… showers of gold water.” The Realmrunner suddenly sniffled as all his overplayed manic energy drained out of him. “Shit, not feeling too good anymore. I think I'm gonna drink some eggs and take a nap. Alright, both of you need to fuck off. Shoo, shoo. I'll sleep on this. When I wake up, I better see some treasures, some mith, and a lot of orcs ready to do everything I tell them to. And I do mean everything. Breaker—“

“I will have them bring the toe-knives. Don't you worry.”

“Good, good. Just gotta make sure you all remember. Anyway, now's the time that you take your asses out of those chairs, mosey out of those doors, and go back where you came from. I got a lot of…” The Realmrunner let out a massive yawn. “A lot of stuff and shit to do before fuck can happen.”

“Very descriptive,” Corcusa commented dryly, but she was more than happy to make her egress from this place. Frankly, being banished from the Realmrunner's presence ranked among the happiest moments of both of her lives. She yearned to be gone, but she shot a final look at the pocket watch before she left.

Her gaze lingered upon it for a moment longer, and then, so subtle she would have mistaken it for an illusion any other time, she felt a shadow of something, something truly immense, moving beneath the waters of time. Then it was gone, brushing her briefly before drifting off into forking futures ahead, and she was pulled out of her monetary reverie as the Breaker's shadow passed over her on his way toward the door.

She made to catch up with him, heels clicking on the wooden tiles as she stepped out of the rancid office without sparing the Realmrunner another glance. Questions were burgeoning inside her person, things she would need to discuss with the Breaker at length. He tilted his head and shot her a look, confirming some of her unspoken suspicions. In the meantime, the Realmrunner splayed his legs across the table once more, leaned back, and almost immediately began snoring.

By this point, she didn't know what to make of him. He was a lout, a slop, a degenerate, a monster of the most banal order, but he was also a survivor, a hoarder of powerful tools and someone possessed of a powerful benefactor.

In this world, one could be lucky for quite some time. One could have fortune intervene on their behalf due to skill, strife, the System's mirth, or simply one's own legend, but it could not happen constantly. For someone to always survive, to make it beyond legend—if the Realmrunner was actually beyond Legend at all, something she still wasn't sure of at all—they had to be something special. Even if the Realmrunner was the literal incarnation of vices made flesh, they all hid something finer beneath—a creature of unmatched cunning and danger, one that had scoured so many worlds, taken far too many slaves, and sold them for nothing more than ephemeral profit and passing delight.

None of the false patrons of Road’s End lifted their heads as the orc and vampire stepped through the room, the twosome’s footsteps each quicker than when they'd entered. They ignored the ostrich glaring at them from behind the counter at the center, who hopped over it a moment later and made for the office, where she slammed the door shut behind her after entering, followed by the sounds of what Maria absentmindedly assumed to be a certain ogre-goblin tumbling out of their chair, along with loud cursing and the noise of thrown objects clattering.

Most of Maria's mind was elsewhere, however. A post-hoc chill ran through her as the realization that she'd been at the mercy of the Realmrunner the entire time settled in her awareness. That silly, pathetic thing was her superior, but she refused to acknowledge it, refused to internalize their statuses.

“Teacher would be ashamed of us for this act of deliberate blindness,” the Harbinger whispered, yet speaking without rancor.

Suddenly, as they left the establishment, a massive hand settled reassuringly on her back. “It's alright, sister, it's alright. He has that effect on people.” The Breaker nodded knowingly, as if hearing her thoughts. “But there is a reason I came here. There is a reason we are dealing with him. There is always a reason. Sometimes, sister, there is very little justice in the world. Sometimes, how good someone is at a certain thing doesn't make up for the lacking aesthetic of their own story. Not everyone has a proper kayfabe they follow. But if you're going to be dealing with the unconventional, you might as well have a wild card all your own to expend.”

“Strange,” Maria replied wryly. "I expected you to think of yourself as the wild card."

The Breaker chuckled. “Oh, I do. But I'm the wild card you wanna keep. The Realmrunner is less than expendable. But the thing is, I think he'll come through. He always comes through. And the best thing about him is that almost no one ever sees him coming. I didn't, and I don't think the Deathless, the Culturist, or anyone else in that Gate will either. Especially considering who's watching over him…”

And though the name of the Realmrunner’s benefactor went unmentioned, it hung between them, a silent promise and an omen neither was willing to invoke. Some things were better left unmentioned.