The Menu - Episode 1
A grimdark litRPG as featured in The Menu (zine) - https://the-menu-zine.itch.io/the-menu-september-2025
The thick stench of rot hit me before anything else. The putrid odor woke me with an intense gagging that forced me to attempt to sit up. But I found myself in rank liquid instead. Surrounded by something soft and fetid. My eyes shrouded in a cloud of darkness. Where am I? What happened?
My voice croaked in my vain attempt to call out for help. Instead, I was met with the foul taste of decay upon my tongue. I can’t die here. Not like this. I don’t want to die.
Thoughts raced through my mind as I forced an arm up over my head and began to pull upwards. My joints felt stiff, as though I had been lying on them for too long. More questions only came to my mind. How long have I been out? What happened to me? I was in my lord’s study… I must be bewitched. Or cursed.
I paused, taking a deep breath. The acrid air filled my head and lungs. I could only survive if I stayed calm… I had to survive. If for nothing else, then for my lord. My thoughts fixated on Lord Lukas. His family plucked me from the gutters of Visterya, farther back than I can remember. He saw my potential. And I saw his. They enabled me to become a level fifteen alchemist, renowned across the continent. And in return, I would dedicate my days to enabling his goal - an elixir of immortality so that he may conquer the world.
The College of Arcane Arts and Sciences always forbade such magic. They claimed it was nothing more than necromancy that corrupts the soul. The gods alone ought to be the recipients of the “gift” of immortality. But I knew they were wrong. Lukas and I could taste that final breakthrough’s proximity!
With my resolve renewed, I outstretched my fingers, finding purchase in more of the spongy material that surrounded me. I jerked, trying to pull myself up, but a hard protrusion caught me in the ribs. I winced, and suspect I would have screamed had I been able to make a sound. The protrusion jabbed through the fleshy wall, like a fractured bone.
I pulled again, this time far slower. The protrusion didn’t stick out far, but I couldn’t wiggle myself back at all. I took a deep breath in and exhaled completely as I pulled up again. My chest deflated just enough to pull myself through. With a single movement, I launched myself upwards with my hand, placing my foot onto the bony shelf.
Direction felt meaningless. Every which way looked the same in the oppressive darkness. But as I looked in the direction that seemed like up, for the first time, I saw a glimpse of light in the distance. I got somewhere.
I tried to move my left hand free, but it wouldn’t move at all. It wasn’t stuck. It just refused to move. I blinked away the panic, focusing on getting to the light.
With a push from my foot, I ascended further, using the moist and squishy lining like a ladder until I hit a second protrusion - far larger than the first, extending upwards several feet rather than a few inches. The rigidity felt different upon my fingertips as well. Whereas the prior shelf poked into the tube I found myself in, this massive lump felt as if it were on the outside, crushing inwards.
Just beyond, though, I could see it. The glistening light outside whatever hellish cave trapped me. For the first time since I awoke, I could smell the fresh air. I could taste something other than bloated death. I was close.
My hand searched and pulled at every bit of the pulpy wall I could reach. Nothing functioned as a way to pull myself up. The space between the cushioned wall and the hard impression extended a foot, if that. I don’t need a handhold. If I can wedge myself in there, I can spread out my legs and climb up like a chimney sweep.
Once more, I attempted to exhale and expel the air from my lungs, though this time, no air came out. Have I… Have I not been breathing? No, I must have just held my breath… That didn’t make sense… I pushed the thoughts from my mind. I could worry about my physiology when I got out. With a push from my feet, I launched myself into the crevice, using my right arm to force my left shoulder against the hard wall and keep my feet dangling back over the ceaseless pit from which I had crawled. I swung my hips next, feet planting themselves in the wall, and with each wet splat I’d kick myself up a little bit, inch by inch, forcing myself upwards. After a minute, the crawlspace tightened, driving my right arm to my side with a sickening crunch. I winced as I kept moving. At that point, my lower back thrusted against the hard wall, and I propelled with my feet upwards.
Minutes passed of the same repetitive motion. I kept making progress, but every inch felt like a mile. In a moment of stupidity, I looked up, finding strange, sharp tubes extending out towards me. I couldn’t make out what they were and pushed again, this time brushing into them. They were rigid but moved with the flabby wall. I pushed again, feeling them buckle under my pressure, pushing them upwards.
Then they began to snap, quickly ripping back down onto my face. In an instant, my right eye went dark, and I felt them tearing across my skin. Pain flared across my face and into my throat. I tucked my head down, soundless gasps escaping my lips as I wanted to scream. I couldn’t breathe. The world closed itself around me as the tubes tried to push me back down.
I felt myself slipping and braced myself. I cannot fall. I cannot die here. My face burned with pain, but I felt no blood. Nothing wet. It couldn’t be that bad. I must just have something in my eye. Like my mother always said, “if there’s no tears or blood, it’s not that bad…”
One final push. I steeled myself once more and kept my head down, smashing through the last of the tubes as they ripped across my chest and abdomen. But that had done it. I land upon a horizontal surface, spongy and rough. Like that of a cat’s tongue. Just ahead, the light shone through a crack in my cave. Flickering. Intense.
Freedom.
I leapt forward, squeezing through the crack, and transported myself into my lord’s throne room. Ablaze. I looked around frantically, listening, looking for anything. Anyone. Smoke engulfed the high, vaulted ceiling. The walls brightly blazed with orange flames.
Looking behind me, my spin came to a quick halt as I greeted what I had crawled from. A dragon lay in the wall, dead. The wall had collapsed upon the winged, scaled beast’s throat. I crawled from a dragon? My knee shook and collapsed as I took a step towards the dead beast, bringing me face to face with Lukas… My lord… Laid beneath the dragon’s chin. I screamed out his name. Or at least I tried, as it sounded even to my ears to be more of a groan as I grabbed at him. His torso came free immediately, smeared with blackened, dried blood, and missing his lower half.
The world spiraled around me. My lord was dead. His keep in blazes. His soldiers gone. My life over. I cradled his head, trying to weep, but no tears came. Everything about me felt dry. Hollow. I gazed down upon his face, and rested my hand upon it, trying to shut his eyes so that in his death, he did not have to watch all he loved burn. But my hand was not my own. The skin wrinkled and taut.
I stood up, looking around, and realized that I had not coughed from the smoke. I could not bear to look down upon my aching chest, and instead glided my hand along the wounds. My fingers seared as they followed the deep scratches; my body involuntarily quivered as I fingered my intestines through my gut. I don’t know how long I stood for. It felt like an eternity before I worked up the courage to look down at the wounds. Black sludge and white pus oozed from the deep scratches, coating a sinewy wall of intestines that begged to burst from my cavity.
I retched, bringing my left hand to my face and smelling its sour, petrified skin. I watched my stomach inside of me convulse as if I would expel my lunch, though luckily nothing came. My left hand and innards looked as though they were ravaged by a plague.
What’s wrong with me? My right hand went to my throat, pressing into my arteries. To my wrist. My armpit. My ankle. My knee. Trying to feel a pulse. Something to know that I yet lived! Something to prove that I had become immortal.
My legs couldn’t move fast enough. Every step crunched, crackled, and popped in my joints as I sprinted towards my laboratory. I remembered what had happened! I was experimenting in my lab when I heard word of the dragon attack… In a moment of brilliance or stupidity, I tested my elixir of life on myself. Then everything went dark.
Dragon’s fire can melt stone, but luckily, it is slow to do so. It would take a full month before the entire castle would be reduced to naught but a stone slab. I couldn’t help but think of this “luck” as I bounded up the steps of the tower containing my lab. The walls were already melting, dripping through holes exploded open by the winged devil’s assault. But that didn’t matter.
My laboratory door burst open under my weight as I scoured the desk for my journal. Fire leapt from the walls to the desk and chemicals, accelerating the burning. I checked every desk, yet they were all clear of my journal. I searched manically as I stepped on a glass vial, the pieces embedding themselves in my foot.
I looked down, exasperated by the pain, still expecting a pool of blood. Instead of blood, I recognized the remnants of the elixir I drank. Just next to the glass was rubble from a gaping hole in the side of the tower. The dragon must have crashed through and eaten me after I drank the elixir…
Without hesitation, I began ripping through the bubbling rock, throwing it out of the hole in my tower. Every rock made my hands blister and welt, but the pain held no sway over me. Not if I was right. Nothing else mattered but my notes. Rock after rock burned and melted my skin. My notes had it. The key to immortality. My mind focused on saving my lord to such a degree that I scarcely recognized the rubble becoming cooler. The fire hadn’t spread down quite as far yet. And in a moment, I saw its brown leather corner. My journal.
I danced with joy as I saw my old friend, holding its binding close to my chest. And as I spun, I saw myself. A glimpse of reality in a mirror. My hands weren’t the only issue. All of my skin had turned blue and dry. My right eye torn from its socket, and half of my face’s flesh sloughed off, hanging by threads, leaving exposed muscle, tendons, and bone. Above my head, I found not the title that I had become accustomed to… Instead, my magical tag said “Zombie.”
Zombie. I tried to say it, but only a groan followed.
I hadn’t found the key to immortality…
But maybe… I raced to the burning chemicals. Glass jars exploded into shrapnel, tearing apart my body. The beaker set up, however, remained. Just enough of my first batch of the elixir to use again.
I rushed back down the stairs, clutching the beaker with every bit of strength I had. Before I knew it, I reached the side of my master once more.
His body felt so stiff. His jaw clenched tight. His parched lips reminded me of fried potatoes… Those exposed organs dangled like pasta noodles from a fork where his hips detached from the rest… His skin crunched beneath my tightening grip, releasing the arousing scent of freshly cooked bacon. My lips trembled under the weight of my tongue. For the first time since I awoke, my sense of dehydration eased as drool dribbled onto my lord’s corpse. My drool. For his succulent, moist flesh.
I stopped myself from lunging. Yet still, my entire body trembled. Fighting me as I opened his jaw and poured the beaker’s contents within, massaging his throat.
It had to work. I couldn’t lose my master… my friend.
Though I suppose, if he unfortunately never awakened, there is a way I could keep him with me forever. Or at least until he’s fully digested. No! I can’t be thinking such things!
He, too, awoke with a scream, cutting my thoughts short. I grasped him, stroking his hair, trying to shush and soothe him, though only groans found their way from my throat. His face darkened, turning from fear to disgust. I merely nodded, and he seemed to understand.
[Necromancy skill - Level Up! - 1]
[Infector skill - Level Up! - 1]
[Zombie Class - Level Up! - 1]
I didn’t discover an elixir for immortality. No, I had found a cure to death.