Enter System, page 36
part #1 of Natural Laws Apocalypse Series
That's three shells. I know she had six, five in the tubular magazine and one in the chamber, he thought. And it's slowing already, so we've got this, I hope.
With another Mana Dart preceding his movement, Marc went back in closer in case Rob ended up needing help. Ella was still hurling her single dart Mana Darts, or had been until recently. Marc imagined she was out of mana by now though, so he was surprised to see her move in closer instead of fleeing back away from the danger. She had a knobby club in her hand, the portion in her grip about the size of a baseball bat, but the other end swelling out to half the size of a person's head.
She let out a crazed scream, swinging her club into the side of the ogre's knee. The shotgun roared again and Marc waited for that before starting to cast his spell, having almost lost concentration on his spells twice in this battle when the gun went off while he was casting.
The ogre was slacking, but kicked at Rob. Rob was watching its arms and not its feet and Marc almost wasn't in time to cast Crenelate on the ground right in front of Rob. As it was he didn't have a chance to warn the tank, just cast it.
Your spell, Crenelate, has increased in skill level (1->2).
When the stone rose from the ground to block the front of the ogre's toes, it roared its anger and pain. Rob, finally having noticed the danger, had been backing up. Now, seeing the three foot tall crenelation and the ogre temporarily slowed as it lowered its foot to the ground, he raced forward the distance he'd just put between himself and the monster. With an extra push he lofted his next step up onto the crenelation, then lofted himself again, longsword brought back over his head and sweeping downwards as he leapt forward.
The ogre, already very shredded from the fight, received the blade of the longsword in the middle of its face. As Rob's momentum carried him back down, the sword was dragged down the front of the ogre, shredding its torso even more.
The ogre was done, collapsing to the ground in a bloody mess. As the four of them stood there, panting, the sound of combat came from inside of the building, followed by a yell.
“A little help here!”
The voice was definitely Jeff's and it sounded like he was in pain.
* * *
Ella was the first to react, she started for the door leading into the building, then stopped.
“I don't have enough mana to cast and I really can't tank at all,” she said. “Someone help him.”
Marc was already moving, heading for the collapsed wall. When Ella spoke, Felicia and Rob started moving as well. Rob heading for the door and Felicia followed Marc.
Marc stopped at the top and started casting. When Felicia reached him a few seconds later, he'd already launched a Mana Dart at Jeff's opponent. Jeff himself was limping around the interior, trying to dodge the hands of the last of the ogres. It was spilling blood from its back, evidence that Jeff had managed his backstab, but simply not done enough damage to drop the creature.
Rob raced inside the door, then looked at the ogre.
“Whoa, ugly! Big ugly!” Rob shouted, Taunting it.
The ogre looked over and a look of rage crossed its face. Meanwhile yellow-gold light played across Jeff's body from Felicia's spell.
Rob had switched out his longsword for his pilum and when the ogre charged him he simply stepped back out through the door. The door was far too small to allow the ogre passage so Rob apparently thought he was safe. The ogre didn't care though and tried to throw itself through the door at full speed. The walls alongside the doorway simply weren't strong enough to stop it, especially after the System deterioration, and while they slowed it, they also gave way and spilled the ogre out onto the sidewalk at Rob's feet.
He stabbed down with the pilum, then leapt backwards as it tried to scramble to its feet. After a second heal on Jeff, Felicia turned to the last standing ogre, shotgun still in hand.
“Last shell, I hope it helps,” she called out.
Marc himself was starting to get low on mana, so instead of continuing to cast he dug out his rifle and the spare magazine. The magazine swap only took a couple of seconds and he spilled the empty mag into his inventory to reload later on.
This ogre was slightly farther away and focused on its target, so this time he used the scope. His finger tightened on the trigger over and over as he squeezed it, sending round after round into the ogre's head. After the first two shots it turned towards him, giving him a better target. It started moving towards him as he centered the scope on its right eye and squeezed the trigger. Text flashed across the bottom of his vision.
Critical strike. Damage X5.
The ogre roared and staggered as the loss of sight in one eye affected its balance. Even so, Marc took aim for its other eye once it had steadied itself. Rob was still stabbing with the pilum, but Marc had done enough damage that the ogre refused to change its target back to the tank.
Marc fired at the other eye, missing. He aimed once more as the ogre reached down to a pile of rubble for a moment to steady itself. In the brief moment it was still he fired again. Text flared in his vision again and he read it as it overlaid the sight of the ogre collapsing forward.
Critical strike. Damage X5.
“Fuck, fuck, fuckity, fuck fuck! Where is it?” Jeff's voice called from in the room.
Marc looked down into it to see Jeff scrambling around on all fours, looking for something. Rob, meanwhile, had stabbed the last ogre one last time to see if it was dead. When it didn't move, he gave a thumbs up.
“What is it, Jeff?” Marc called.
“I lost the damned gladius, the stupid ogre knocked it out of my hand and now I can't find it.”
“How valuable does something need to be for your find valuables skill?” Marc asked.
Jeff straightened up and shot one arm up into the air, index finger extended from the hand at the top of the arm.
“Great idea! One second.”
Jeff concentrated for a moment then started scrambling again, this time with a purpose. He started tossing items into a pile and when he reached the third thing he'd detected, a loud sigh came from him. Marc watched as Jeff sheathed his gladius, then turned back towards the items he'd already tossed into a pile.
“There's more in here too, I'll work on that for now, you guys go loot the rest, okay?”
Instead of following his suggestion, Felicia worked her way down the rubble into the room.
“You aren't healed all the way, you're still limping, let me take care of it,” she said.
Marc saw her start casting again and walked away to check on Rob. Before he'd started shooting, the last ogre had been pounding on the tank pretty badly. Now he was just sitting on the ground.
“How are you, Rob?”
“Exhausted, burned all my stamina trying to Shield Bash this thing, but it wasn't working.”
“Not surprising since it's so much larger than us,” Marc said. “Are you wounded at all?”
“A little. I'll go find Felicia after I catch my breath.”
“She's taking care of Jeff right now. He wasn't looking too good, didn't seem to be thinking too straight, either.”
“So, you're saying he was wounded but otherwise normal for him?”
“Nah, he was freaking out over having dropped the sword. That doesn't sound like normal to me, even for him.”
“Well, hopefully he's okay. We're only a little more than halfway to our goal.”
“Yeah, I'm wondering if we should keep going today or try again later.”
“Today,” Rob said. “You said it yourself, the longer we wait the fewer we'll save. And if these are gamers then we'll probably get more combat classes and be able to handle more than we have been.”
“True, I just worry about us sometimes, you know?”
Rob got a serious look on his face.
“I do too, all the time, but it isn't like I could do anything but what I've been doing and still be able to look at myself in the mirror. Even this doesn't feel like enough, but it's all I can do,” Rob said. “All we can do, I suppose.”
* * *
Marc took Jeff's advice and went to loot the two ogres from the outside. When he had, he was surprised at what he received. Trotting back in to the last of the ogres, he found everyone else inside.
“Hey guys, I don't know what's up, but each of these ogres is giving me about as much gold as the troll did,” Marc said.
“Huh,” Jeff said. “Wait, that makes sense. We killed the troll with what, something like fourteen people? This time we only had five on three of them. So if they were the high end of uncommon, or low end of rare, then it would make sense.”
“Didn't it tell you commonality when you Analyzed them?” Marc asked.
“Oh, maybe, let me check.”
After a moment of checking his logs, Jeff nodded.
“Yeah, they're technically only uncommons, but so were the orcs, so there must be different difficulties within each commonality?”
“Anyhow, the point being,” Marc said. “There's gold on those corpses, so make sure you remember to loot.”
Recalling Jeff's rather disrespectful act with the troll, he kicked the last of the ogre corpses, looting it as he did so.
I hate to admit it, but that's kind of fun, Marc thought. Maybe even a touch cathartic?
“Alright, Jeff, what's up with the freaking out earlier on. Scrambling on all fours to find the sword? What was that all about?”
“I need a backup weapon,” Jeff said morosely. “You would not believe how helpless I felt when I didn't drop that guy and he disarmed me. Standing there, weaponless, trying to dodge.”
“You had your throwing daggers still, right?”
Jeff pulled out a dagger and held it up in front of him, sweeping his other hand up and down it to emphasize the blade length, then he pointed to the ogre. The dagger was about the length of its middle finger. Making the comparison with his own fingers, Marc realized that it would be like trying to take on a person with a pocket knife.
“Oh,” he said.
“Yeah, so I wanted the sword back in hand in case I missed one and it showed up. I was almost positive that was going to happen and I'd be dead,” Jeff said,
“You found some other things though? I saw you tossing stuff into a pile.”
“Oh yeah, there are a few other valuable things in here too. Let me loot the ogre so its corpse is gone then we'll clear it out and I'll get the others,” Jeff said.
In the end they'd all received a handful of gold per corpse, some silver and copper on each, plus the five items Jeff found inside the building. There were two potions, a necklace, a ring, and an ax that he'd found. The ax was a double-bladed battle ax, not a woodsman's ax, and it was rather heavy.
“Stash that stuff and let's keep going, assuming everyone's back to full,” Marc said. “We lost a lot of time here, but it was probably worth it. I sure as hell wouldn't want to find that those things were breeding and filling the city.”
“I need a few more minutes. I just got Rob back to full health finally,” Felicia said. “So my mana's down again.”
“Alright, everyone sit and rest, I'll take watch,” Marc said. “Anyone else close to the next level? I'm only about seven or eight hundred points away.”
“Little over a thousand,” Felicia said.
“Same,” Rob added.
“About nine hundred for me,” Jeff said.
Everyone looked to Ella.
“Um, level seven? I'm nowhere near there, but I did get all the way up to level four already. I also got a new spell. A light spell? Not combat anyhow, but maybe good?”
“Did you already use your stat and skill points?” Jeff asked.
She nodded.
“Like we talked about. I bumped my Constitution for more health, My Intelligence for mana, plus some into Agility and Aptitude. Next level will be Willpower and Strength, like you said.”
“Skills?” Jeff asked.
“I didn't fill those yet. We hadn't decided on what I wanted yet.”
“Good, we'll go through those tonight and find out what will benefit you the most,” Jeff said.
He slumped back, relaxing, yet his hand never drifted far from the hilt of the gladius.
“Oh, and my Mana Dart went up to a two,” Ella added.
“That's even better,” Marc said. “When it hits three you'll get a second dart.”
“Does it keep adding on every odd level?” she asked.
“So far, I've only got it at five, so I'm not sure if it continues, but I got the third one at five.”
She nodded.
“I guess we'll see then?” she said.
“I hope so, I'd love to get that up to where I get a fourth dart,” Marc said.
“I'm full on mana, we can go,” Felicia said.
The group stood and started walking again.
I sure hope there's someone there, Marc thought. Taking out the ogres was probably a good enough reason for this trip, but getting more people has become harder. I don't think there'll be many non-classed still alive, unless they're with people who did get a class.
* * *
Chapter Twenty-Seven
They moved a little slower when they started off again. Everyone had been kind of keeping an eye out earlier on, but now after the ogres, they were being even more cautious. There were another five blocks past the ogres where the large holes appeared in the buildings, but then they went back to the more normal, dilapidated look they were used to at this point.
Even moving a bit slower, it didn't take them that long to get to their goal. They could see the two concrete apartment buildings in the distance as they approached. They appeared to be in better shape than the buildings that had used a less durable building material, but even the concrete was showing some signs of wear, as though it had been exposed to erosion with no maintenance for several decades.
Ella barked a laugh.
“Heh! American Khrushchyovka,” she said.
“American what?” Rob asked.
Marc had been about to ask himself and was relieved that he wouldn't have to reveal his ignorance.
“Khrushchyovka,” Ella said, “it's a Russian term. I never would've remembered it if I hadn't recently dropped a few more points in intelligence, but years back I did a report on the things. Essentially, because traditional masonry for building is more expensive and time-consuming, Russia decided on poured concrete buildings, like these. That's what they were called: Khrushchyovka. They're hideously ugly, but quick and cheap to build. Sorry, didn't mean to disrupt anything, it just kind of came out when I remembered the name.”
“That's fine,” Marc said. “It's not like we're doing a lot else at the moment. We can talk while we walk, so long as we also keep an eye out.”
As they got closer to the concrete apartment buildings, Marc noticed a lot of scorch marks on the concrete walls of the ground floor.
“Wow, looks like they had a fire or something,” he said.
Jeff nodded.
“Wait here? I'll go scout it out. See if there's anyone alive,” he said.
“Will do,” Marc replied. “Damn, I'd hoped to find more survivors, but if they had a fire in the building?”
He slowly shook his head.
Jeff patted Ella on the arm, then stepped to the side and shimmered into Stealth. Marc assumed he was going to check the building out and that assumption was verified about thirty seconds later.
A head poked out of a window on the third floor.
“Stop right there!” the person yelled.
Marc looked up.
“We're not moving at all,” he called back.
“Not you, your scout. He's just about at the front door and he'll be really unhappy if he opens it,” the person replied.
“Jeff, abort!” Marc called.
“Yeah, yeah,” Jeff called back. “I saw the tripwire, I was about to disarm it.”
“Did you see the pressure plate that will activate if the door swings open though?” the person in the window yelled.
Jeff broke Stealth and stepped back, looking up for a moment.
“No, damn it, I didn't see that trap until you warned me about it. How the hell can you see through my Stealth and set traps I can't find?”
“Long story, no time for it. Why are you guys here? What are you doing?” the person in the window called.
“Can we come in, or you come down, so we don't have to yell?” Marc said.
“Give me the ELI5 first, then I'll decide.”
“Explain like you're five?” Marc asked incredulously, “Fine, here's the tl;dr version. We started a Safe Zone. We're trying to rescue survivors and get them there.”
“Too long, didn't read version? Really, Marc?” Felicia asked softly.
“Hey, it sounded like he wanted the most concise explanation I could give, so I did,” he replied, just as softly. “Not to mention I'm still a little pissed over the freeloaders. This yelling back and forth isn't helping that either.”
“Alright, come on over to the wall you're facing. Third window in from the road is safe to talk through, I can pull the traps off of that one easily enough,” the person yelled.
“Well, I guess we know they've seen some action,” Rob said. “If they trapped everything around, they must be having some problems.”
“That's the guy I was talking about, the one who was setting up the LAN here,” Ella said.
“Well, let's go talk,” Marc added, heading for the designated window.
* * *
“So, you got a Safe Zone? How'd you do that?” Kenny asked.
The person who'd been yelling from the window had introduced himself as soon as he'd come down. Marc could see several other people in the room behind Kenny, but they hadn't said a word yet. What was more worrying was that it looked like they were well equipped, better than Marc's group had been at the start at least, probably even better than they were equipped now.
I hope that doesn't mean they'll want to stay here. We could use a well equipped party to help find more people, Marc thought.
