Canon Fodder

CHAPTER 471 UPDATE

CHAPTER 471 UPDATE

EASTON

I came out of the Walking Dead world as other Weston did. He was a mirror image of me. Still young, I guessed we were around 12 years old. Black, semi-curly hair on our heads, we wore smaller versions of the clothes we had been wearing in Walking Dead, so he was naked and I had a bathrobe on. My eyes scanning the room, the only change was to the door behind us, the light above the doorframe was green now. I had cleared two rooms in the Comic Hall, something that had taken me quite a bit of time to get around to. 

“So another world?” I asked happily. To be honest it was kind of nice to split up. Though I would have liked to take my time, we had technically received twice as many challenger slots by doing this together. Doubling the ultimate rewards in these halls. 

“No man, I’m sorry, but I really want to try to save Hancock,” he said.

I frowned at him. “You sure? Pretty sure you were moving on pretty easily without her.”

“Fuck you,” he said legitimately offended. “Can you really tell me you would have acted any different?” 

“Probably not, but still, what the hell man? I heard you had like ten harem members.” 

“It was five,” he said, scratching his cheek in shame. “I don’t know. They kind of just happened. Do you really forget how strong our libido is with the Chikyugi?”

“Fuck no,” I said. “I feel it still. You forget you and I split. My libido is just as high as yours.” 

“Maybe,” he said with a sigh. He scratched his stomach. I could almost feel the worry inside of him as he began looking around the room. “I don’t know…it’s affecting me more than I would have thought. I was with her for a whole year. I woke up every day with her next to me. Every day we had crazy sex. Every position available, nothing off the table, and she pursued other women just as much as I did. Like, I know we had a lot of women in Manga, but Hancock made it so much better in Manhwa. I didn’t feel any shame pursuing someone. Hancock established herself as number one with all of them. I didn’t have to deal with a lot of the drama.”

“That…would be nice,” I said with my own shame. I had bitched more than once about the juggling I had to do. “But that doesn’t give you any time to get to know them. What’s the point of living in these worlds if we don’t make lives?”

“Don’t get me wrong. I took the girls on dates,” he said. “Maybe not the girls in Walking Dead, it wasn’t like there were any restaurants open. But we had our moments. Like with Grace. I gave her chakra, we trained a lot, and I really did see what you liked in her.”

“Which reminds me, thanks for that,” I said. “You know, old me liked her.”

“I know,” he said. “We are the same person; you know that, right?”

“Are we though?” I asked truthfully. “I don’t know, we have had a whole lot of different experiences. Experiences make us who we are.” 

“I know,” he said. “But we have the same end goal, Easton, you know that.”

“Fucking hell,” I grumbled. “I’m sick of that name. You know I’m just as much Weston as you are.”

“You lost the bet,” he said angrily. “Are you welching on it now?” He stepped back, studying me and my Haki. I forced myself to calm down a little. I didn’t want him to know my deepest thoughts. 

“Sorry,” I said, blinking. “I don’t mean to cause drama between us. You’re right, we have the same goals.” I looked up at him, getting angry again, “But no more sleeping with chicks I had my eyes on.”

“I’m sorry, truly,” he said, meaning it. “I was working through some stuff. The only time I didn’t worry about Hancock was during sex or when we were under attack, and the latter didn’t happen all that often.” I studied him, feeling the worry begin to leak into his Haki. He was being truthful with that at least. 

“You get it out of your system?” I asked. “No more sex crazed crap?”

“I can’t promise that,” he said. He smirked up at me. “Did you lose your game, man? I thought you were good at sex now?”

“I am-” I said, but stopped myself. I really didn’t want to explain my issue with my Hoken. I immediately thought of stealing one of his girls in the other Halls.

“Don’t,” he said, reading my mind with Observation Haki.

“What? It was just a thought,” I said.

“I know, I swear, I’ve learned my lesson,” he said. “Please, don’t do your electric-Pikachu bullcrap on any of mine.”

“I don’t know, I think we should agree on a penalty,” I said truthfully. “Something that we don’t want to lose.”

“Fuck, fine,” he said. “What do you have in mind?”

“Potions,” I said. “I want half.”

“Fuck you,” he said, offended.

“What? It’s called a penalty for a reason,” I said, no shame on my face. His shadow clone had bragged about them enough, now that I was next to his real body, I wanted some fantasy world potions. 

“Five,” he said. 

“Of each,” I said. 

“Fuck,” he spat. “So if we steal the other’s girl again, we get to take something from the other?”

“I think so,” I said with a shrug as I held out my hand.

“What the hell do you have that I can even take? Your subspace is locked to worlds,” he said. 

“Shit,” I said, having forgotten that part. He had quite a few potions in his Inventory from Solo-Leveling, Tutorial is Hard, and Second Life Ranker. If I took them from him, I would only be able to pull them out in those worlds. “Give me one,” I said. He frowned but a tall red potion appeared in his hand. 

Weston had been in the Manhwa world, where gaining the ability to do stuff like a gamer was pretty standard. One of the abilities he had was an Inventory. Unlike mine, he could store most anything inside and pull it out where he wanted. Though he was limited on size and rarity of item, he wasn’t limited on quantity or worlds. Making his Inventory much better than my knock-off version with my Rift. 

I took the intricate glass filled with the red liquid and put it in my subspace. I then reopened the subspace and pulled the item out. “See, I can use them in here. That way if I get in a jam I could at least heal myself here.”

“Fine,” he said, pulling potions out of his Inventory. He gave me four more red health potions, five blue mana potions, and five green stamina potions. “You don’t even freaking have mana,” he grumbled. 

“Doesn’t matter,” I said. “You’re rich enough. Sorry you don’t have 99 in your stack anymore.”

“You better be,” he said, then locked eyes with me again. “I am sorry about Grace. You know that, right?”

“I know,” I said, feeling better because of how truthful he felt. “Now, what about this World Update? What are the pros and cons of it?”

“We did this with Hancock when she became our Companions,” Weston said, thinking back. “It updated all the worlds we hadn’t opened with a version of her in them. Pros…we could each have someone to Memory Meld,” He said. 

“And won’t appear naked, next to one another,” I said.

“Unless we go to a world we already opened. Those won’t update,” he said. I nodded. “What else?”

“Uh…should give the worlds a chance to reevaluate everything we have done. So we could get harder worlds, or get put in harder situations.” 

“Which would give better rewards,” he added. I nodded again, glad we were on the same page. “What about the cons?”

“Would we be twins in the worlds?” I asked.

“No idea,” he said. “How rare of a name is Weston Walker?”

“Around the world?” I asked. “Probably more than a few of us?”

“You know as well as I do they probably don’t pick people based off name,” he said. “I’m guessing they find someone that looks similar to us, probably rewrites their history, changes their face to ours, and we take over.”

“I don’t know, I’m leaning more toward the System just makes us up. Gives us a backstory,” I said. I agreed that it was very unlikely there were different versions of us in every world. Especially people near the canon of these worlds. There was definitely some System finagling going on. Besides, whatever controlled these rooms could freeze entire universes, they had to have a lot of powers. 

“Yeah, so we might be twins, but I doubt it. I’m not really seeing a downside though.”

“Me either,” I admitted. “Let’s do it.” He nodded and pushed some invisible buttons.

Unopened Worlds Updating

Please Wait....

“That’s new,” I said. 

“Yeah, I don’t remember this with Hancock,” he said. He looked around to the main door, our 6 o’clock. “Shall we?” 

“We are leaving?” I asked, a little disappointed.

“Fuck yeah,” he said. “You already opened DC, and Marvel, so even with an update, I’m not going to get a power.”

“There is a possibility of getting a power in the Boys,” I said.

“Fuck that, with my luck I’d end up as some sex slave to an OP hero,” he said. “Probably a male one.”

“Yeah…I have been hesitant to try to find that world,” I admitted. “So what are you suggesting?”

“I’m not sure how many times I need to say this, but Weston, Hancock is in trouble,” he said, struggling to not get angry. 

“I-I hear you,” I said, raising my hands up defensively. “But I don’t have the World Lasting Physique in Manhwa. I really don’t want to go to Solo Leveling and be super weak. I need to at least get that in another one of the worlds in Manhwa. My Viltrumite form should hopefully be strong enough to at least help.”

“Fuck,” he said. “I forgot we split before you got World Lasting Physique.”

“Besides, we can open a new door in your Hall and figure out what the World Update did,” I said. “Orrrr,” I said slowly as I looked to the exit. “We could go to one of these worlds and summon Hancock.”

“We already agreed not to,” other Weston said. “No fucking with these worlds Hancocks.”

“Which I understand. But I was thinking, I met her in one of the outer rooms.” I pointed toward the Smut room. “I met her there. Rewards aren’t as good there and-”

“Domination world, right?” Weston asked. I frowned but nodded. “Yeah, no, I know she would be weaker and easier to handle. But I’m not going to risk summoning an otherworld being into a girl’s body where she would get the memories of us fucking the shit out of her. She is the Queen of Reptiles. She fucking hates humans, and adding that memory to hers would only make her hate us more. I really think we can beat Solo Leveling and get her back without screwing up any more Hancocks.” 

“Fine,” I said, rolling my eyes. I wasn’t sure why this Weston caused so much drama. Luckily I was immune to it. “So are we agreed upon the plan? Go to a Manhwa World so I can get World Lasting Physique.” 

“Yeah, you had me at Viltrumite,” he said. “Besides, I could potentially get stronger too, which wouldn’t hurt matters.” I nodded and we headed out of the room. 

The hall between worlds had two doors on the right and one on the left. Some offshoot of Comic worlds I didn’t pick we headed to the central Junction. Inside was a large room with four doors, one on each wall. Each door had a word written above the frame. Straight ahead was Manga, which was crossed out, to our left was Books, and to our right was Manhwa.

“You went into Books, right?” I asked.

“Yeah, Hancock wanted me to use a World Choice,” he said.

“Which world was it?” I asked. 

He let out a sigh. “Harry Potter.”

“Was it in the main room?” I asked.

“Yeah, it was the 12 o'clock door,” he said.

“Jeez, who knew original us was such a basic bitch? Why did he waste his time on Harry Potter? The magic there kind of sucks,” I said.

“I don’t know, Hancock’s past selves were obsessed with it. I reread them again during my offtime. They weren’t as bad as we remember.”

“You read them?” I asked, surprised.

“Yeah, remember we bought a bunch of stuff in Second Life Ranker. They had manga, and books, and all that crap,” he said.

“Oh right,” I said. I had forgotten. “Shit, should we have looked in Walking Dead for stuff?”

“No, I looked. They had shit,” he said. “And no manhwa. I think the System wised up on the cheat.”

“Shit,” I mumbled. The screen asking us to wait disappeared. I didn’t see any changes but it must have finished cooking. We both received a notification. 

Congratulations: Your Worlds have updated.

Unopened doors will be updated

to include both of your presences.

Future Challenges will no longer be treated as separate events.

If Weston is killed, you will not lose the progress that Weston has

made in the Worlds.

“Fuck me, that was a possibility?” I asked.

“I didn’t think it was,” he said. “That would have sucked to fight two different challenges.” 

“Right?” I asked. “Fucking L.”

“Fucking L,” he said with a nod. Annoyed, we walked to the Manhwa door together. As we did we each received notifications. 

WARNING YOU ARE ATTEMPTING TO OPEN THE MANHWA HALLWAY

Please pick the Challenger Slots you would like to keep for this new Hall.

Note: All Status screens are locked to the Hall. Skills, Abilities, Items,

and Bonuses will not be shared between Halls unless picked as a challenger slot.

No progress will be lost for leaving Halls.

Annoyed that I was going to lose some of my hard earned skills for a bit, I combed through my current screen. Luckily, I had been busy and had quite a few to go around. I of course picked my Viltrumite Physiology for my Form. The Abilities were a little harder to whittle down though. I actually had enough Challenger slots for each of my skills, but a part of me wondered if I would get a cool ability in the Manhwa Hall. Would I want to be able to take it to another world? 

“Fuck,” I said. I ended up picking Hoken, Timeflow, and Rift. I left Fusion off for now. It was useful, but I used it once in a blue moon. There were simply too many useful possibilities in Manhwa. I would prefer to keep my Slots open in case I got a cool ability I wanted to take from Manhwa. 

I had three Bonuses I could pick so I ended up with Serendipity. That was it, again, I had a high chance of getting a good Bonus.

“Take Ailment Resistance,” Weston said.

“What? Why?” I asked. 

“Trust me, Hancock is the Monarch of Poisons or whatever. You need all the help you can get,” he said. I frowned, but guessed he was probably right. That left me a spare Bonus Challenger Slot. 

“Am I going to need armor?” I asked. 

“Yes, very much so,” he said. I frowned again but picked my Shi’ar Armor as a Challenger Slot. It was stronger than my Gantz Armor, and I guessed I would need as much protection as possible. I highly doubted Weston would be up for another few months in another world. He felt ready to jump in to get Hancock back. 

For my last choice I of course picked Gold as my Challenger Slot. USD could have been useful, but we had gone to too many fantasy worlds to risk it. I studied my screen, making sure it was as I wanted. 

Name	Weston Walker
Current Quest:
World 1:
World 1 Quest:
Passive Skills:	Memory Meld
	Dead Man Walking+
	Handicap	Dismiss
	Gemini	Active
Summon:	N/A
Pet:	Matatabi - Level 8	Summon
1 Challenger Slot
Forms:	Viltrumite Physiology	22.55%
1 Challenger Slot
Usable Abilities:	Status Screen	Other
6 Challenger Slots	World Escape
	Berserker Mode
	Nen
	Hoken
	Timeflow
	Rift*
Bonuses	Major Psychic Resistance
6 Challenger Slots	Medium Body Mod Resistance
	Hardened Organs
	Serendipity
	Ailment Resistance
Items	Gantz Armor	Stored (24)
3 Challenger Slots	Shi'ar Armor
Currency:	Gold	3,514
1 Challenger Slot

“Ah shit,” I said. “I forgot to use my World Choice.”

“What does that matter?” He asked.

“We could have picked a good world to start in,” I admitted. 

“Don’t worry about it,” he said, focused. “We are strong enough to deal with most anything.”

“Fine,” I said. I had hoped to at least look at the list for possible worlds to get something cool, but to be honest most manhwa worlds had some sort of cheat. No matter what I picked, I would probably get something good. We walked into the door together and came to the Manhwa Hall. 

Inside there were nine doors. Eight had red lights over the doors, and the 12 o’clock door had a green light. Weston pointed at the doors, moving clockwise from the 9 o’clock door. “Beginning after the End, Returner’s Magic, Second Life Ranker, Tutorial is Too Hard, Solo Leveling.” The last was the 1 o’clock door. “So this wall is video game aspect,” he said, pointing to the north wall. “We got second life crap over here.” He pointed to the left wall. 

“Beginning After the End sounds fun,” I admitted.

“Yeah, I didn’t get too far into that,” he said. “I’m thinking we check this wall out,” he said, pointing to our right. 

“The Gamer would have been good,” I admitted, tempted to head back to Comic and use the World Choice. 

“Too much grinding,” he said. “And no guarantee we would get the same game cheat.”

“True,” I said. “Fine, what do you think?”

“Don’t know,” he said, studying the doors. “Closer to the entrance is usually harder, but I hate to not do them all in a row.”

“I agree,” I said. “But desperate times…” I grabbed onto the door at 4 o’clock. Weston nodded and I opened it. Stepping into the pitch black room, the only sound was our footfalls as the door closed behind us.