69: Taylor Hebert and the Nine Realms
Fanfic
Once, many eons ago, the ancient and far-away realm of Asgard faced a danger so severe that none could save it. In a fit of desperation, the prince that was soon to be king, Odin, fled to the roots of Yggdrasil and sacrificed an eye to the Well of Mimir, stabbed himself in the side with the mighty spear Gungnir, and hung himself from the branches of Yggdrasil for nine days and nine nights in order to gain the powers he needed: the Eye of Odin, all seeing; the Knowledge of Runes, crafting powerful things and diving the future; and the Blessing of Mimir, the All-Knowing. However, he could only do this because of an earlier hero.
Back in the days of the great Giants, the beasts of stone and sky so great that PARTS of the corpse of one make up the whole of Midgard, a hero who's name has long since been forgotten rose up to birth the Asgardian Race. To gain the power to do so, he went through the Three Trials of the Nine Realms, crafting the area that would, day be known to the Asgardians as the whole universe. Not that it was, but the Asgardians were warriors and explorers, not high-plane physicists. Still, the amount of power that went in to, not just connecting nine realms, but birthing the Asgardians? It was a HUGE amount of effort. And it happened like this.
Deep in space of the multiverse, or perhaps its time, there exists several forces dedicated to keeping it going. The Custodians are mostly there for mechanical needs, building what needs built, fixing what needs fixed; do NOT disrespect them, however, as they are the ones that Crafted HrXar, the World-Devourer, the force that prunes the dead branches from the tree of the multiverse, who not even the mightiest figure known in these realms, Kashim the Immortal, could stop. Then there is HELL, Inc., and the Elysium Initiative; these two are moral guides who reward the good (Elysium), and punish the bad (HELL, though they also forge many of the great heroes); thought neither of them are going to be pertinent here. On top of that, there is the Consortium, who keep the multiverse in the black, the Archives, who keep track of everything, and several others. Howsoever, there is one force that is both the strongest, and the strangest.
True, they cannot beat all the others. However, as the multiverse is primarily an entertainment industry, it was decided that they should have preeminence, due to the fact that their only job is to keep things stirred up. They are the Norns, crafters of prophecy, and weavers of Fate. They also were the brilliant minds behind the Gamer System, the Essence Packs, ROBing people, and several other popular fan-favorites. This story, however, focuses on one of their less-used ideas: the Three Trials and the Nine Realms (patent pending!).
The basic idea is this: a hero in a near-doom world is chosen. Said hero then goes through nine realms: one, four, and seven are trail realms, where certain achievements in specific fields must be made; two, five, and eight are basics-building for those three fields; three, six, and nine are treasure-worlds, where peak value in each of those fields is readily available for only small amounts of effort. As such, the successful Nine Realms explorer leaves this challenge thoroughly boosted in three subjects, well-tempered, and ready to give a hell of a show. Even better, the person can enter the next world whenever they want! No rush, no hassle. And to take the convenience up another notch, the realms have a time dilation effect to see to it that you can be gone for years, or even millennia, and only be missing for a few weeks at the most! Neat, right? And that completely ignores the fact that each successful realm gives you a pocket space related to the precise knowledge the world offered that grows and gathers new equipment (that can also be added from the real world, if you have the time and money) as your knowledge of it grows. Amazing, isn't it?
Okay, sure, high chance of death before even the first realm is over, and you can't leave an already started realm, but so what? Omelets and eggs, folks!
However poorly it was received amongst the Powers of the Multiverse, the Norns, on rare occasion, sent this training and refining method out into the world from time to time. And thus it was that, the fourth day of the winter vacation before what would later be known as the Locker Incident, Taylor Hebert woke up…
…in a world full of zombies.
Now, Taylor was underfit, poorly trained, and had many mental issues. Pluck, however, she was not lacking. Moreover, she started in the Horde Zone, a place where the individual strength of the zombies mattered barely at all, just the numbers. Less than a week later, she had a passable base camp. It took her a month to truly get the knack of hunting zombies (and get into decent shape), and within a year, she was pretty badass. Moreover, she found she had a real passion for, not just hunting zombies, but also dissecting them, analyzing their blood and saliva, and generally working out what happened here and why.
Six decades and more than a hundred new types of zombies from eight or more factions later, she was a hunter of the first rank, an absolute nightmare on the battlefield with melee or ranged conventional weapons, could have a shelter set up in less than a week, and had cured more than five base sources of zombie-ism, preventing their spread, culling those species to extinction, and, in one case, bringing the zombies back to humanity. Two more decades rounded out her life here (she was a VERY fit, biologically enhanced human), and she peacefully fell asleep in her bed one night…
… to wake up in her room again, with all her biological and technical knowledge and combat instincts and training intact. Moreover, she found she had access to a pocket realm in which were copies of all her research, a fair amount of lab equipment, and imitations of Alex Mercer, William Birkin, Adam Wesker, Dr. Robert Nevel, and many other zombie-creating or modifying scientists, all of which served her religiously. On top of that, she felt that, not only had she just passed a major test, one of nine, in fact, and she could start the next one whenever ready.
Needless to say, things don't exactly go to Worm cannon after that!
(So, the idea is that Taylor goes through three trials, three foundation-buildings, and three treasure worlds, gathering skills, knowledge, and techniques as time goes by. My idea was that she goes through three science worlds [zombie mashup, science mashup starting with BioShock, through a rigorous academic education, moving past Bloodshot {ONLY Bloodshot} and Cyberpunk to Alita, then Horizon: Zero Dawn as her foundation-building world {ALL the super-science!}, then finally on to Marvel for serums and nanites and every other bit of super-science that place has], three Martial Arts worlds [Kenichi the trial, One Piece the foundation, in which, I think, she becomes the Queen of Bounty Hunters and builds the Bounty Hunter Alliance and helps the Revolutionary Army, and a Wuxia world for the treasure], and finally, powers [RWBY for the trial, My Hero Academia for foundational hero stuff {with her learning how to infect people with Quirk Factors and Trigger their natural Quirks due to her super-science}, and Xianxia, perhaps for the treasure?. That's the gist of it.)