It's Time to Jump! Jump 3: Chapter 2:

Chapter 2: True Challenge Gauntlet

When I returned to the Warehouse following the latest jump I was met with blank stares from six humans, one hyper-dimensional being, a confused infant and 64 assorted Pokemon.

Why?

Uh, maybe the overflowing crates of instant noodles was the reason. “You abused a Gauntlet to make purchases basically for free, how dare you to game the system like this?” Asked Jump-chan, though it didn’t sound as angry as I would have guessed. “And on top of that, you didn’t purchase anything cute!” And… there goes the maturity.

“Well, it was the easiest “Get lots of CP without needing anything from the document” jump I found, so… yeah? Also, the tech is kinda expensive.” I admitted, it wasn’t even a lie, but I wanted the database!

Jump-chan was pouting but sighed. “Fine, I will allow it for now since it, technically, doesn’t go against any rules, and nothing you purchased influenced the Gauntlet itself. However, you will have to take one more Gauntlet at least, and if you fail, this Gauntlet Run will end and you gain no bonus CP.” Stated Jump-chan and I blanched at that, ouch, that was kinda strict.

“Also, I will be the one to choose your next Gauntlet.” Added Jump-chan and I felt dread well up for some reason. Oh boy howdy, that won’t be fun.

Jump-chan then walked up to the machine and locked in a new jump and apparently locked out the Mail Order function, fair enough, before directing me to take a seat.

Generic Stick Fighters Gauntlet.

…

“Damn it.” I muttered, banging my head on the table.

This was one of those more combat extensive jumps, even more than the PUBG Gauntlet had been. It could take up to a year and basically made me fight up to 1 million opponents in a row, followed by an optional boss, I may not even take that one, that was basically a huge Eldritch Abomination.

Yeah, it’s hell on Earth.

But I had no choice but to accept it. At least I had the combat experience and Bodymod to go along with this sort of shenanigans. It would still be fairly brutal, that was for sure, but damn if I didn’t get a good workout and some nice perks from this one at least in compensation.

Sighing I petted Angelica, who had by this point assumed her Pichu Alt-Form (Squeal) to sit on Jump-chan’s shoulders, before going to the machine. This was going to be a long one.

First were the Drawbacks, I won’t go into detail here on those since I just need the CP to survive.

Drawbacks:

Optional Boss: Moot (+000): A anthropomorphic cat person of indeterminate gender wearing a pink shirt over white fur and a little four leafed clover pen at one ear. With a massive hammer in hand this strange figure fights you at the beginning of your journey. If you beat them you may take their hammer as your own. It’s nice, big, red, and has BAN written on it gilt letters along the side!

Jumper, the Stick Fighter (+100): You’re a stick figure composed of a solid color, as is everyone else. It doesn't really impede you any but it is a thing. For an addition 100 CP you are your least favorite color. (Pink)

It Hurts. Every. Time. (+100): Your life is not threatened by this world, in point of fact everyone here isn’t able to really kill anyone else, but even pain is just a dull warning to most folks. To you each defeat is akin to a near death experience and you feel pain just as vividly as you would normally.

Mid-Boss: Xia (+100): After the first couple of dozen foes you’ll encounter a figure able to move incredibly fast, is a skilled hand-to-hand fighter, and has a unique skill to form hordes of clones which he uses to tire his foes out. His clones are solid enough to punch a man out, but break under any blow that would do more damage than simply bruising him. Numbers are a problem, but the guy seems hopeless with most weapons. For an additional 100 CP expy’s of him become a uncommon foe you’ll see every now and again.

First Boss: Shock (+100): After the first hundred foes you will meet with Shock, a strange foe who has a unique skill to increase their sense of time and speed to the point that, to them, the average of this world may as well be standing still in mid-run, though they burn through their stamina at very high rate just standing still in this state. They’re a skilled combatant, a drab hand with the various weapons of this world, and you have to defeat him in a one-on-one brawl to get to the next level.

!!???!??!!?!! (+200): There is a foe among the hordes your fight who is abnormally lucky. Everything from a chance recovery to just falling away from strikes are things they’ll experience. While they are terribly random in their own fighting style, naught but a simple brawler and unskilled with the myriad weapons of this world, they often make up for it with sheer dumb luck. Though, as a good Jumper knows, those who rely on luck to win are often weak to the skilled, break their glass jaw. However, there’s always one among those you’re fighting.

4 Player Mode (+200): It’s a party and everyone's invited. But you’ve got to go the long way around by fighting three others at a time. This isn’t really going to make your chances of defeat any worse but it is quite slow.

Optional Boss: Beast of Argh (+200): Through the ever shifting battlefields you will find yourself, at some point, stumbling upon a figure in a field of corpses, as in the field itself is to the inch covered in dead bodies. This is the mighty Beast of Argh and it’s a monster who can easily match a person in a Boss Mask for sheer vitality. It is able to move faster than the human eye can see and has a tendency of tearing a person's head free from their body. Weirdly enough it looks like a bunny rabbit or some other cute animal at first glance. Thankfully it can’t use weapons and while its attacks hit harder than the average shotgun a skilled, or well armed, person should be able to kill it with enough time… and if you can hit the damn thing.

Second Boss: Xiao (+200): As you approach the apex of one of your fights a new foe will step forward, an enigmatic foe whose attacks trails fire. This is Xiao and they will be the ‘gatekeeper’ for your victory. The fighting is fierce as Xiao can keep up with any non-unique skill based level of speed with the kinds of ease that may seem shocking and they also seem to have the acumen born from fighting you a million times before. In fact the most powerful skill that Xiao has is that they are able to experience all of your foes battles before they met you and gain some sense of your abilities from it whilst ballooning their own experience while doing so. It is very difficult to surprise such a foe.

The Ground Quakes (+300): If the quakes ruined the arenas that you’re put in often enough that alone wouldn’t be too bad. This is like the world itself is not fighting you in addition to the often arena breaking quakes you have to deal with on the regular you also have to deal with the fact that there are often more than twenty foes around you at all times and none of them seem inconvenienced by the quakes quite like you are. It’s like these legions feet are what make the ground quake so, in addition this makes it so that only after defeating twenty foes will you get a single victory point.

Mad Skillz (+300): After hundreds of fights you’ll start to notice them. One or two among the teeming masses which seem somehow different. They are tougher, have more skill, and on average seem faster than the average mook. These elites become commonplace after a time and by the point where you’ve slain thousands there aren’t any average foes any longer. They get unique skills after you pass the halfway point in your journey each one now being a foe that could have taken on the bosses at the begining with equality.

The Measure of Humanity is Blood (+300): They still aren’t dying when you kill them but now blood is getting everywhere, slicking the ground you fighting upon, getting on your hands, and in general making everything harder. Moreso this is effecting your mind with a haze and you fight your desire to not deal with this stuff grows. It’ll take titanic willpower to get through the hordes to your goal..

The Prelude to The End: He Comes (+300): Something strange happens during your fights every now and again. Sounds become muted, the sun turns black for a moment, or all your foes just blink away for a moment as you’re left alone in the world with a distant figure seen near the horizon. Everything fixes itself in a moment but every single time this happens you suddenly are left on the back-foot as the foes take advantage of your inattention. This could be fatal in the latter stages of the battle.

Final Boss: Xin (+300): Xin is the final foe upon the world after nearly at the cusp of victory. This foe has all the skill to have earned his way to the top of this strange world and when you meet him for the first time he reveals his first ace. He can simply copy all aspects of your existence as and then add it to his own. While he can’t become a Jumper, it’s not really an aspect of YOU but of the journey you’re on by his telling, he CAN gain a copy of all of your perks and skills from this world easily enough. To fight your equal one-on-one, this could be a true challenge, yes?

Optional Boss: Zalgo [Requires: The Prelude to The End: He Comes] (+600): At the end, however you got there, you meet with one lask foe. He Who Waits Behind the Wall has finally found someone who can break the wall down. This being is Zalgo and he’s a strange being with strange powers. The victories from before were basically training to take this thing on, or sacrifices to see it brought forth. He fights with numerous tendrils and he recovers from wounds as they’re made and thus this isn’t a battle for victory but a fight for time as the Wall between what is and what should-not-be mends. However long that may take, you must fight this eldritch abomination under the light of a black sun while the ‘souls’ of those you’ve fought before fly upwards into that blot in the sky as you repeatedly ‘kill’ it as if they were simply a part of the greater hive, but your victories release them from it. Death against this foe, and Zalgo CAN kill you, is Gauntlet Failure, but you’ll be spared any other terrifying fates as you’re pulled out.

So, I took pretty much all of the optional boss drawbacks and quite a few of the others. This gave me 3300 CP to work with, but also a rather huge amount to work against.

Next were the perks:

Perks:

Starting Synth Stereo (Free): Before even the first punch is thrown the idea of conflict is already thing. When you decide to go into battle a catchy synth tune plays, either audibly or heard only by yourself, as you wreck house. Can be switched on and off at will.

Floating Figures Falling (Free): Everyone here seems to drift lightly in the air. While this can’t keep you from falling off an edge it can keep that fall from being fatal and allow you to recover. In addition you have an innate talent in kicking off walls, running along breaking pathways, and other strange skills that would usually be attributed to wire-fu in movies.

Standard Stick Style (Free): Take all of Earth’s martial arts styles, ever, and then break them down to their most iconic and simple moves. Blend them together perfectly and then you have the style you’ve just gained. A strange style that allows you to use pretty much any martial arts skill together as long as it’s just the simple physical parts of the style. Qi use and other such mystical abilities take special training to blend so easily. The style itself is simplicity itself and thus really easy to teach, but it’d still be within the top ten lethal styles on your homeworld.

Breath Like Fresh Daisies (-100): Firstly, your breath now smells like a mundane fragrance of your choice, chosen at the beginning of the day. Secondly, this is a stamina management skill that can allow a person to fight for hours on end with no noticeable drop in effectiveness you’ll likely need this in the coming times.

Lead Block (-100): You have an amazingly weird talent to block attacks coming at you. Everyone in this world is able to float around like a feather but you can do the inverse, suddenly becoming akin to a brick of lead. This is most useful when your blocking as it significantly lowers damage from most conventional attacks, but it could be used in other ways by the creative I guess.

So, why did I take these? First three: Free. The last two? Cheap and I will need to be able to recover stamina quickly here. I have it in spades but that one’s rated for a week, not for up to a year. As for Lead Block, you know I’m not exactly Godzilla, right?

Borrowed Time (-200): You’re in a world where folks aren’t afraid of lifting guns on you to beat you. Thankfully you’ve got a nice little trick up your sleeve in the form of this. When you are about to be hit by a crippling, near-fatal, or fatal attack your personal perception of time multiplies to the point where even bullets are crawling through the air slowly. In this state of Borrowed Time you can try to counter the attack, seemingly reacting dozens of times faster than you really are.

Refresh (-200): After every fight you’ll find that the arena switches around and you continue through the endless hordes. As stated before this world knows not death so you’ll be taking on one million foes in an ever changing environment with very few lulls in all the fighting. Thankfully with this any lull in real-time battle beyond a minute can be as good as a full night's rest for you.

This was another thing. Being able to have bullet time, like with “Focus”, would be a great addition to my powerset and “Refresh” would mean I didn’t have to worry about the environment becoming hard to move in.

Martial Mentor (-200): In addition to having phoenix eyes that flash like flame and immaculate hair which never inconveniences you, you are not just an able body among the horde but one like the mountain hermits and ninja masters of yore. You are very capable on your own having the ability to ‘juggle’ your foes bodily using your martial skills and you likely have a special named move or two which uses the internal breath of Qi as a source of energy. In addition to this general competence you are blessed with a truly beautiful talent to pass on your skills, even those you’ve learned from other worlds, indeed you can carry over a martial art that isn’t covered by Standard Stick Style with this perk though it’s maximum output is on the level of an building breaking at it’s greatest for the duration of the Gauntlet. You may purchase this multiple times if you so wish for 100 CP per style that you add to your repertuar.

Power (-300): Elite is a term in this world for anyone with enough power or skill to manifest a strange abberitionary ability beyond just beating the tar out everyone around you. With the Boss Mask an average person could achieve such lofty heights, but you are already there on your own merit. You have the general skill level in combat equaling world-class fighters and a toughness to be able to get into slugging matches that leave the entire building you’re in a twisted wreck of broken concrete, bent iron, and destroyed walls. You also have the ability to throw out blasts of brilliant light, of your chosen color, which can completely bowl over the common rabble in one shot and you’d need only a few direct hits to take down your fellow Elite. OR Create up to two dozen clones equal to your own skills and abilities though they’ll fade after taking a hit that would normally reduce your own effectiveness in battle.

These were the probably most valuable perks in the line, one to teach and become a martial arts master, the other to give me that special wham that I would need to fight even the bosses on even ground. For Power’s special skill I chose the multiplication ability, as this would allow me to rest a bit while clones did the beating up for me, at least long enough that I could rest a bit.

I also still had 2200 CP left.

Warmaster (-300): This is a measure of skill beyond the kin of normal humans. There is nothing normal about how easily you’ll find fighting the average people and while, given time and numbers, an Elite may manage to hit you every now and again you’ll find that they’re relative level of skill depressingly low and only their enhanced bodies able to make up for the oppressive martial acumen this perk grants. Be it your legs, arms, or head your strikes are always with whatever measure of your total force you’re able to create with even the smallest seeming movements, your body moves fluidly from one stance to the next, and even weapons of this world have become like familiar friends.

Bulletproof Monk (-300): Firstly, yes you really have become bulletproof as if you flesh were formed from kevlar. Secondly, as a fighter you have gained an edge in battle as your attack trail flame with every stroke and you can use your personal energy, or chi, to form ranged attacks on the fly, the least of which is about as deadly as a thrown rock and the most powerful of which could equal create thirty meter wide spheres of building breaking explosions. Finally, your mind is clear and you’ll have a lot easier time with mysticism in general, and philosophy in particular.

Humanities Apex Predator (-600): So many things hunt humans. Wolves, tigers, hippos, and even other humans to name but a few foes of humanity. However, this power you now have grants you the edge to take on even the great example of this world people, the Bosses, with the kind of ruthless ease that makes you the king of the jungle in this dog-eat-dog world. This edge makes you a being able to adapt to and then overcome things while growing in the face of adversity. To be more specific this ability grants a body which is far above and beyond even the Elites of this world, grants animal-like traits as long as those traits are improvement upon the human base, and is able to deal with such traits instinctively by having an amount of innate intuition on the ability themselves.

And now I had just loaded myself up with all the bullshit skill I could find. 1200 CP that were many things, but not wasted in this sort of battle.

Weapons Falling from the Sky (-100): Mundane swords, guns, and more fall from the sky. For an additional 200 CP you can have weapons from your warehouse gain this trait as well post-Gauntlet. Do note though they don’t need to fall from the sky, they can appear in hand for you.

Boss Mask (-300): A strange piece of headwear that grants the wearer access to the Power perk, or if they already have the Power perk then they gain either Accelerator or Warmaster, for a period of around ten minutes. A person could train using this Boss Mask multiple times over a few weeks and gain the Power perk permanently.

Knock-Off Weapons of Wonder (-600): These are strange weapons unique to a lot of other places at first glance. The Shikai of Ichigo Kurosaki, the unique initial sword of Tidus, weapons unique to a range of Sci-Fi novels and television shows, and more, but at a closer look they’re just weird knock-offs which are still nigh-unbreakable weapons able to do some weird little thing. While the weapons can’t do anything more than wall breaking blade beams or the rough equivalent they’re still neat thing you might want to get them. Do note though they don’t need to fall from the sky, they can appear in hand for you.

And the final 1000 CP were spent on equipment. Those were mostly as insurance that I could actually pull this off more easily.

I then proceeded to slot in my choices and was whisked away, off to the world of Stick fighters.

Well then, how did this go?

Well, the first thing I found was the first optional boss, that cat person. It took me around five seconds to take them down and take their hammer for myself. Then come the first group of 20.

Duplicating was probably one of the most useful things I got out of this whole thing, allowing me to mow down the enemies much easier as I moved through the area with impunity thanks to my power. I encountered one after another the individual bosses, it become harder each fight but I had a few advantages against them thanks to my perks and hefty use of various weapons and the Boss Mask.

Fighting the Final Boss was probably the hardest part, but he didn’t have my absurd levels of resilience and natural endurance, which was his undoing when I stabbed him to death with eleven swords, decapacitating him with a rip-off Lightsaber.

Then come the Eldritch Horror, Zalgo. Let me tell you this, the document wasn’t joking about this being a battle of attrition. It took me almost three months to take him down but ultimately, I was able to endure through the battle and the monster was banished from this realm, with me bruised, bloody and exhausted.

Returning home I sighed in relief as my body returned to normal and I was healed of the bruises I suffered.

“Whelp, you did it after all. And you went the extra mile no less.” Noted Jump-chan as I turned to her, a bigger than before Angelica in her arms, a few months did pass after all, so this made sense.

“Heh, I’m not one to lose that easily but, mind if I stop now with the Gauntlets? I’m exhausted. Mentally at least.” I stated, taking my little daughter from the deity.

“Very well, I’ll return in… let’s say a month of relative time. I’ll even extend your ability to wait here.” Stated Jump-chan with a smile before vanishing and I sighed.

I needed the cuddles. Maybe Cristine was up to making a little sibling for Angelica.

Angelica the Angel