[Hogun POV]
I opened my eyes and sat up.
I just had a nice dream… something about Gmod, tools, chaos... typical stuff. But wait—why does my room look different?
I turned to the mirror beside me, only to see a gas mask staring back.
Right. I'm stuck inside my Gmod server. My custom-built city, my world, my madness.
I looked at my hand—no tool gun. It only appears when I'm inside the portal. So this is real… I actually did it. I went crazy yesterday.
[Flashback Begins]
I stood before the leaders of Reunion. All of them were glaring at me like I was some alien artifact. Which, to be fair, I kinda am.
[Hogun]: I will support you. Protect you. You have my word.
[W]: What's in it for you? Nothing's free in this world.
[FrostNova]: She's right. We were just trying to kill each other a few minutes ago. Why the change of heart?
[Hogun]: Because... someone has to be insane enough to give a damn. Also, if I take responsibility for this city—if I claim it—then Ursus will focus on me. Not you.
They didn't look convinced. I pulled out a syringe, twisted, and it glowed like a rave in a test tube.
Gift from Hast. An old player friend. She left me her legacy: all her experimental gear. Some of it is labeled with ominous warnings like 'DO NOT INJECT — UNLESS YOU WANNA SEE GOD'.
This one, though, was marked "Cure-All."
I found an infected man nearby and stabbed the syringe into his arm.
Within seconds, the Originium crystals shriveled and flaked off his skin like old paint. His breathing calmed. His eyes cleared.
Everyone stared at me like I'd just rewritten the laws of the world.
[Hogun]: Hast may be crazy—her idea of fun is trying to kiss metaphysical death—but she's smart.
[Flashback End]
After that day, all of Reunion came under my command.
I didn't ask—I told. Their leaders refused the cure at first, citing pride or suspicion or whatever—but I didn't care. I forcefully administered it. Even though the supply was limited, I used it anyway. I still have ten syringes left. That's enough.
Once cured, I ordered their engineers, along with mine, to start fixing the city they wrecked. Redemption through labor, as they say. Concrete, steel, and guilt.
A victory celebration followed. Fireworks, weird music from the sound system I rigged into the skybox, and a cake that may or may not have screamed when you cut it.
That night, two visitors came.
One from the Red Khan's people, the other from the Pirate Queen's crew.
Both delivered the same news: Their leaders were gone.
Not dead. Just… gone.
I didn't panic. They're both players, after all. Like me. Probably logged out, got bored, or went AFK mid-raid. It happens.
So what did I do?
I grabbed a bottle of bleach from the prop shelf, gave it a little spin, and chugged it down.
Gotta love Gmod logic.
Except…
There was no logout screen.
No fade to black.
Just pain.
Blistering, all-consuming pain.
And when I woke up, I was still here.
My NPC doctors were crowded around me, fresh from performing emergency surgery. I could feel every stitch, every scalpel pass, every second of it.
I passed out from the agony.
And when I came to again... that's when I finally broke.
This wasn't a game anymore.
[Hogun]: God dammit… my social life is over.
I muttered that while staring out the window.
The city below—my city—wasn't the one I remembered. It had grown. Towered. Sprawled. It was ten times bigger than anything I ever built in Gmod. And it was packed with people.
Too many people.
Apparently… I've been ruling this place for eight years.
Eight years.
That's ten times longer than I ever played Gmod.
And somehow, I never noticed.
Or maybe I did… and just forgot. Time bends weird here. It's hard to keep track when you drink bleach to log out.
Oh, and that's not all.
Turns out the Pirates Bay people and the Red Meadows survivors have both moved in. After their leaders disappeared and their cities got overrun—Shack Town swallowed by fire, and Red Meadows drowned under endless waves of zombies—they came crawling to my city, asking for protection.
And, of course, I let them in.
Because apparently, I'm not just the admin of a server anymore.
I'm the accidental king of a post-apocalyptic megacity built from sandbox props, duct tape, and desperation.
What a mess, And now I've got another problem.
The portal.
The world beyond it—the one I thought I could ignore—isn't some abstract threat anymore. There are people over there. Desperate people. People who'd kill for a cure.
And I have it.
But it's limited.
Non-replicable.
Only Hast knew how to make it. It's a custom craft—buried in madness, genius, and probably six layers of inside jokes and untraceable scripting.
God damn it.
I rubbed my temples and sighed.
[Hogun]: Looks like I need to call a meeting.
I tapped the comms crystal—well, a "walkie-talkie" duct-taped to a mana stone. It crackled to life.
[Hogun]: James, round up the semi-leaders of the Citadel. Also, get the Pirate Queen's left and right hands, the Red Khan's horse princes—yes, all of them—and any high-rankers left from Chernobog. Reunion too. I want their representatives at the central tower. Half an hour. This isn't optional.
The comms clicked.
Outside, the sirens echoed once again. Trade carts rattled on the steel roads, war-banners flapped in the winds above skybridges, and down below, people moved in tight clusters—hoping their next breath wouldn't be their last.
Because the world was ending.
And somehow…
I was supposed to fix it.
[Thirty minutes later]
I stood in the war room at the top of the Central Tower.
The table was crowded. Pirate nobles in salt-stained coats. Horse princes from the Red Khanate, their armor still dusty from the steppe. Chernobog's last engineers sat silent beside the newer lords of Reunion. And Reunion's old leaders—Talulah, W, FrostNova—stood watching me, arms crossed, eyes sharp.
The room buzzed with tension. No one here trusted anyone else.
And within minutes, they proved it.
"Your people are hoarding food again," snapped one of the pirate lords at a Red Khanate envoy.
"Because your dock thugs stole from our shipment!" he shot back.
"Why do they still wear their Reunion colors?" a Chernobog engineer muttered.
FrostNova narrowed her eyes. "You want us to wear your symbol instead? You've barely survived without us."
The noise escalated—shouting, accusations, chairs scraping against stone. Old grudges, fresh wounds, and too much pride.
I'd had enough.
I slammed my tool gun on the table.
It left a crack in the metal.
[Hogun]: Sit. Down. And shut. Up.
Silence dropped like a bomb.
Everyone froze.
I stood straight, the weight of eight years of rulership anchoring my voice.
[Hogun]: This city stands because I held it together. You all came here begging for protection, so let me be very clear: if you don't start listening, if you don't follow orders when I give them, then I will kill you myself. I don't need an army. I built this place. I can unmake it.
They didn't speak.
Even the pirate nobles looked pale.
Talulah, calm but firm, finally broke the silence.
[Talulah]: Why keep the cure secret? The people suffer. Let them have hope.
I sighed. My fingers tapped against the side of my helmet.
[Hogun]: Because it's not a cure. It's a miracle. And miracles run out.
I pulled a leather-bound notebook from my satchel and tossed it on the table.
The pages were scorched, stained with oil and ash. Scribbles—barely legible, halfway between code and madness—covered every inch.
[Hogun]: This belonged to Hast. The one who made the cure. The only one who knew how. She's gone—missing since the last update. Maybe dead. Maybe trapped. I don't know.
I pointed to the book.
[Hogun]: That notebook holds her notes. But it's encrypted in her... genius insanity. I've been trying to decode it for years. So, unless any of you happen to think like a Gmod-playing mad scientist hopped up on caffeine, dreams of godhood, and experimental Lua scripting, this book is just paper.
Silence.
It wasn't the silence of obedience this time.
It was the silence of dread.
Because now they understood: we weren't holding salvation—we were babysitting a time bomb made of hope, paranoia, and dwindling miracle juice.
And someone had just lit the fuse.
[Hogun]: Also, we know it's been leaked.
They looked at me, confused—until the heavy iron door to the war room slammed open.
Shadowy13 stepped in, his armor singed, his helmet visor flickering red with combat data.
[Shadowy13]: Confirmed. Hundreds of drones, birds, rats with chips, and even a man in a hot dog costume. All carrying the same message: 'There is a cure in the city.'
He dropped a handful of drone wings and torn broadcast speakers on the table.
[Shadowy13]: We shot down most. Some got through.
The room went cold.
I turned to FrostNova and handed her the notebook—Hast's cursed, divine scribble-journal.
[Hogun]: Here. Try reading it.
She looked at me like I had handed her a cursed relic.
Still, she opened it.
First page. She squinted.
Then frowned.
Then flipped two more.
[FrostNova]: …What the hell is this?
[Hogun]: Read it.
She cleared her throat, visibly confused.
[FrostNova]: Put the Ah is ice freezing hot and filter it with a bee cucumber.' …What?
I leaned over her shoulder and pointed.
[Hogun]: That means melt wax.
She blinked slowly.
I flipped another page for her.
[FrostNova]: 'Add banana. Or grandma, ask if allergic.'
W made a noise that might have been a suppressed laugh or a cough of despair.
[Hogun]: She was a genius. But not a linear one.
I took the book back and snapped it shut.
[Hogun]: She built this cure with things no sane person would ever consider ingredients. I've got ten syringes left. That's it. So, unless any of you suddenly become a 4D chess-playing Gmod wizard with a deathwish and a blender full of fruit, don't ask me to make more.
I looked around the table.
[Hogun]: Now the world knows. And they're coming. And we'll have to choose: who we save, who we fight, and how long we hold this line.
The heavy steel doors slammed open with a metallic shriek. A soldier, gasping and bloodied, nearly stumbled over himself as he barked the words none of us wanted to hear:
[Soldier]: They're here! The dead are at the gates!
A pause—just a heartbeat.
Then the room exploded into motion. Shouts. Scrambled orders. The sound of gears winding, sirens flaring, and engines growling to life.
I didn't hesitate. I was already moving, sprinting through the tower corridors, down into the heart of the city I built from digital dreams and madness.
I emerged onto the walls, wind slicing against my coat. Below me… hell marched.
Thousands of them.
Shambling. Sprinting. Screaming.
The infected tide rolled across the land like a living storm cloud, sweeping up dirt, trash, and corpses as it came. Old shacks, fallen banners, even burnt-out buses were trampled under their weight.
And leading them were the smart ones—mutated, pulsing with dark intelligence. Some wore pieces of armor. Some held tools. Some had faces I recognized.
Faces of people who once lived here.
I felt the weight of the katana at my side. My cursed Gmod toolgun buzzed faintly in its holster—just being near this world seemed to make it alive.
I placed my hand on the wall and stared down at the horde.
[Hogun]: I built this city to be unbreakable. Let's prove it.
I turned and shouted to the guards, engineers, and wild-eyed survivors manning the wall.
[Hogun]: Activate Wall Protocol 3. Prep the rotating turrets. Funnel points to Choke Zone Beta. And someone tell FrostNova to light up the frost cannons—we're making a graveyard.
Gears spun to life. Autoturrets emerged from the concrete. Gmod-physics-defying contraptions unfolded: giant spring launchers, sticky bomb slingshots, even a goddamn medieval ballista someone insisted on building.
Then silence again—just for a moment.
I drew my katana.
It shimmered with glitchy energy. A modded blade, fused with every powerup and cursed script I could find.
The zombies howled.
The gates hadn't even opened yet.
But I didn't wait.
With one last glance at the wall, I leapt.
Wind howled past me as I fell from the battlements. My long coat flared like a demon's wings, and my boots hit the ground with a metallic crunch, cracking the pavement beneath me.
A shockwave rippled out from the impact.
The zombies turned.
But by then, my katana was already drawn.
It howled—a screeching, glitch-sliced sound like tearing code—as I activated its "fun mode."
Flames erupted from the edge, pixelated fire mixed with raw corruption.
Then I charged.
They came at me in waves—rotting arms, snapping teeth, clawed hands reaching for flesh.
I moved faster.
The katana slashed once.
Then again.
Then a third time.
Each strike was like a thunderclap, splitting through bone and rot and infection. Every motion burned with chaotic fire—Gmod physics in real-time. Heads spun like launched props. Limbs ragdolled into the air. Entire clusters of infected exploded into corrupted chunks.
I twisted mid-air, flipped off a half-crushed car, and landed in a back-slice that carved five zombies in half.
Behind me, an infected brute charged—eight feet tall, muscle and tumor. It swung a sewer pipe like a club.
I ducked, shoved a sticky grenade in its gut, and punched it backward.
BOOM.
Its torso vanished in a fireball of gore and bananas. (Thanks, Lua script.)
[Scene: Wall, FrostNova, and James overlooking the battlefield]
FrostNova clutched the icy rail, eyes wide, frost condensing around her hands. She watched as Hogun bisected a grotesque crawler and punted its still-hissing skull into a berserker zombie.
[FrostNova]: He's... fighting them alone. That's suicide.
James, calmly lighting a cigarette, smiled at her.
[James]: Not for him.
He took a drag, blowing the smoke into the cold wind.
[James]: You weren't there at Whiteveil.
[FrostNova]: Whiteveil?
[James]: Something even I don't know much about, even with it being the place of my birth, but this? This is a warm-up for him.
The sounds of the undead horde below blended into a chorus of shrieks, explosions, and the sizzling crackle of flame and steel. But up on the wall, an eerie stillness hung between FrostNova and James, the weight of history pressing against the frozen air.
FrostNova glanced at him, the frost creeping up her sleeves like ivy.
[FrostNova]: If even you don't know the full story, then what did happen at Whiteveil?
James exhaled slowly. His eyes didn't leave the battlefield. Not once.
[James]: All I know is this… the sky turned red for three days. Every clock stopped ticking. Former leaders and kings left the rest of us behind and deserted.
[James]: They said Hogun walked into their alone. Came out dragging an AI omega core behind him. Said he rewrote the laws of the server mid-battle… just so he could break them again.
A distant boom echoed as Hogun unleashed another Gmod script, turning a hundred zombies into rubber ducks before setting them ablaze with fireworks.
[FrostNova]: He's... not normal.
[James]: Of course he isn't, he is Hogun, the great general Hogun, our leader
[Chapter end]