Warbreaker's Rage: A LitRPG Apocalypse Adventure (The Connected System Book 3), page 32
“Where?” he asked as they reached the main doors.
“To the east by the pond.”
Two guards wearing what had once been ceremonial armor but was now real, holding spears, opened the wooden doors. They swung smoothly, opening onto a landing with a long set of stairs leading down into a large courtyard.
The yard was full of dueling soldiers.
Practicing.
As they should.
All action stopped, eyes watching Oroku as he walked down the stairs. They all stood straight, bowing as he walked past, not saying a word.
They all knew where he was off to, what he was going to do.
If they had been in America and other parts of the world, the crowd would be cheering. There would be an element of excitement and eagerness as they watched Oroku walk past. They would call out his name, be loud, and, well, they would not mean to be disrespectful, but they would be.
But here in Japan, they treated the occasion with solemn silence, respect for his Abilities and strengths. They had faith that he would prevail.
As they should.
The large gates to the castle swung open. Oroku walked out, not paying attention to bowing guards on either side of the doors. Arms behind his back, he casually walked down the path.
Once out of sight, he picked up his pace. Faster than a jog, not quite a run. He wanted to be at his best when he reached the beast.
It took time to reach the pond.
Surrounded by trees, the pond was small—a crystal-clear body of water. Grass ran along the banks for ten to twenty feet, the tall stalks waving in the wind. The beast saw him, or heard him. It didn’t matter.
The beast was ready for Oroku.
And he was ready for the beast.
He picked up speed as he entered the clearing, holding his hand out to the side. A katana grew from his open palm, fingers closing around the hilt made of Spirit. It glowed green, the sword as detailed as if it had been forged.
The beast roared, rising up.
It was huge. Long, easily twenty feet or more, with a barrel chest. Short legs at the front and back, a long tail whipping behind it. The large head at the end of a long neck. Green scales covered the body, shining in the sun, red fins down its back and up the neck.
The dragon roared as the small man rushed to his death.
It was the apex predator of this forest. Nothing was as strong or as powerful. The dragon had lived for hundreds of years, the last of its kind, hiding in the forest and the caves. It had been much smaller. Cunning and strong, but having to hide away.
That had chaffed at the beast. Its kind had once ruled this land. Had ruled all lands.
Then, a strange event happened. It didn’t know what it was. The earth had shaken, and the dragon had gained in size and power, and with each kill, it got stronger still. The humans tried to kill it. They found it and attacked.
And they died.
Everything died to it.
The humans had attacked in numbers. It had defeated them all.
Now this one human dared to attack it?
The dragon roared, head snapping forward with jaws wide. Fire shot out, a wide gout aimed right at the man.
Oroku felt the air heating up as the flames rushed his way. He watched, waiting, feeling the heat against his skin. He pushed off the ground, leaping high into the air over the flames.
The fire crashed into the ground, not just flames and heat but a physical weight.
Oroku slashed with his glowing sword, the tip of the blade cutting into the dragon’s wide snout. He landed on the ground, diving into a roll to avoid a sweeping attack by the sharp claws. Coming out of his roll, he stabbed up with the sword, finding a joint between the thick dragon scales. It pierced in deep.
The dragon roared, this time in pain.
Oroku dashed to the side, out of the reach of the dragon.
He had scored first blood.
DORILOISHI, ANCIENT DRAGON
His Evaluate was not high enough for more than a name and a feeling. The dragon was stronger than he was.
Much stronger.
Oroku smiled.
The dragon turned to face him. He held his glowing blade pointed toward the beast.
“This land is under my protection,” Oroku said.
The dragon roared, smoke billowing from its nostrils.
“These people are under my protection,” he continued. The dragon stared at him, eyes larger than his head glaring. “I would let you leave and live somewhere else. You are a dragon, you cannot help but be what you are. Except you have killed my people. That cannot be tolerated.”
The dragon understood. It lunged at Oroku.
He leaped into the air, using his Sword Rush Ability. It came with his Class, Samurai, along with others. The Ability allowed Oroku to close the distance between his opponent and himself. Distance covered in an instance, gaining the initiative and being able to make an unprotected attack.
Many monsters had fallen to Oroku with one strike of his Spirit Weapon, Sosen.
Not the dragon. Its size and speed were great, allowing it to twist away from the attack. Oroku landed, twisting to the side, raising his sword, and catching a descending claw on the energy blade. The weight and strength pushed at him, but Oroku held his ground.
A Samurai would not be moved.
The fight had only been seconds. It would not be an easy one, Oroku knew. He would win. He was of the Yoshi Clan. Of course he would win. But it would be hard.
He knew he couldn’t get overconfident. The dragon was powerful, the strongest monster that Oroku had faced yet. A single mistake would end his life.
But he was the Clanlord. It was his responsibility to protect his people. Doriloishi was magnificent, a beast that should be allowed to live and roam the lands, but the dragon was a threat to the Yoshi Clan.
Oroku would kill it.
Maybe the Spirit experience would be enough to push him up another Level or two. He could gain on those above him in the Ranking Board. Not that he truly cared about such things. It was undignified, Ranking them like the world was now a game.
But it would feel good to earn the top spot.
He was Oroku Yoshi, after all. He deserved it.
The laugh was loud. It seemed like it could be heard for miles around, even over the thunderous boom of the massive monster’s four legs slamming into the ground. The huge horn, three or four feet long, was aimed right at her. The whole thing was as wide as she was at its base, the point the size of her closed fist. If that thing impaled her, it would rip her body apart.
Which is why she wasn’t going to let it.
Siberian Rhinoceros were the stuff of legend. They had existed millions of years ago. The cold of northern Siberia had preserved some specimens. They were called unicorns because of the massive horns that grew off the noses of the large animals.
The creature charging at her was that legend reborn.
A huge head with small eyes, tree trunk legs, and a massive body covered in thick, shaggy fur.
It was just like the pictures she had seen.
Diana Brekhov stood her ground.
She kept laughing, enjoying the biting cold wind against her bare skin. The wind carried small shards of ice that tore through the leaves of bushes across the frozen plains. She didn’t feel them. She didn’t feel the cold.
Her body radiated heat, keeping it at bay.
Diana had been surprised that she’d gotten a fire-based Class. She had grown up in Siberia and the cold. Even if she had gone to the cities in the south for school, only coming back home when her mother had fallen sick less than a year ago, she was truly at home in the cold.
But it made sense.
Siberia was cold. Fire was the opposite of cold. Everything in Siberia was based around surviving in the cold, utilizing the cold, and adapting to the cold. All that meant fire was a weakness.
And it was one she was happy to exploit.
Long blond hair whipped in the bitter wind.
Diana shifted her feet, her worn leather boots getting a grip on the icy plain.
The beast got closer.
The ground shook.
Diana raised her bare arms, tongues of flame curling along them.
She could hear the people around her, shouting for her to move. Some were cheering her on. The people of Siberia. Now her people.
Her Clan.
The flames stretched out past her hands, shifting in the wind as they gathered and started to take shape. In her right, the flames formed a hammer, the head about a foot long, six or so inches high and wide. In her left, the flames continued to stretch, growing longer and thinner.
Lowering her arms, Diana cracked the whip in her left hand, small wisps of flame trailing the crackling length. Flames still curled around her arms, coming from her chest, linking her Core to the weapons. Her Soul Weapons.
She had felt like she should name them, but she hadn’t.
They were weapons. Tools. There was no need to name them.
The rhinoceros got closer.
How different life had become in just a few short weeks.
Her life had already changed in under a year. In the city, she had been one of thousands. Nothing special. A basic job that managed to pay her bills. Some friends. No boyfriend currently. Diana was attractive but not stunning. In Russia, that meant she didn’t get noticed. Blonde hair, brown eyes, not tall, but average height.
Before the Connection, Diana had been average.
When her mother had fallen sick, it hadn’t been that hard to leave the city and return to Siberia. She was still average, but the hard life in the plains being anything but average didn’t help. She fit right in.
Then the Connection came and everything changed.
Diana was no longer average. She was the strongest person around. She was the one that everyone looked to for protection.
It was not something she had wanted, but she accepted the responsibility.
Before her mother had died the day after the Connection, she had made Diana promise to protect the villagers. The hundred or so survivors in the village had been joined by others from other villages across the plains. They somehow sensed Diana’s strength and flocked to her. Her Clan, which was a strange thing to call the collection of people, had grown quickly.
Food was scarce, but this was Siberia. People knew how to survive.
And thanks to monsters like the one she was facing, they had plenty of meat.
It normally took three or four of the Classers to take down a beast like this, but Diana welcomed the challenge.
She knew the laughing made her sound crazy; truth be told, maybe she was a little. How else could she stand out in the middle of a Siberian plain in leather pants and vest with no shirt or heavy parka? Her internal energy, Spirit, whatever it was called, kept her warm. She felt like she was in the tropics, not that she’d ever been; she’d just seen pictures, and it looked warm.
Diana had only ever been to two places. Siberia and the city.
She laughed because of how absurd the whole situation was.
Everything since the Connected System had changed Earth was absurd. She just rolled with it, just accepting it all. She had to in order to help her people.
‘Her people,’ that concept alone was laughable.
So was her summoning weapons from her own internal energy. And why a whip and hammer?
The beast came closer.
Seconds passing.
Diana set her feet, instinctively knowing how to fight. Something else absurd. Her Class, Bogatyr, was a warrior. Straightforward damage dealing. That she could understand. It was a powerful and Rare Class.
She enjoyed the power it gave her. She didn’t enjoy the responsibility that came with it. But her mother had raised her right. She would do what she had to.
Cracking the whip in her left hand, Diana shifted her body, bringing her right side back, cocking the hammer over her shoulder, ready to swing. She saw the huge horn of the Siberian Rhinoceros bearing down on her, the dirty bone seeming to catch the light of the sun.
Diana stopped laughing, but she still smiled.
This was her new world.
For her, it was better than the old.
Now she was something special. Someone special.
The beast bore down on her. Diana leaped into the air, flaming whip cracking against the monster. She landed on its back, hammer coming down.
Chapter Thirty-Four
The fallen tree had been reinforced. More trees had been added and space cleared out on both sides. More gaunts manned the wall.
“That’s about all they do,” Bobby McKay said from where he crouched next to Loch.
The two were a couple of hundred feet down the road, hiding behind a tree and clump of thick bushes, which in pre-Connection days wouldn’t have been as thick or as tall.
Bobby was part of the current scout team who had rotated in a day ago.
“Just walk back and forth in front of it, most standing on top. There’s been a couple of those with the hounds, but they never go that far past the tree. Mostly, they walk around in the front with the hounds and then head back up the hill.”
“They don’t send out scouts of their own?” Loch asked.
“Nope. I haven’t seen it and the other teams say the same.”
It appeared the gaunts were content to maintain their position on the road.
It was a bad position for Loch. They blocked anyone coming from the west, except for the roads that looped around. Loch found it odd they hadn’t moved their wall to block access to Main Street. Maybe they had built another wall up there, using this one as bait. Make people think they could go around the gaunts only to be trapped up the other street.
The gaunts needed bodies to make more of themselves.
That was the working theory at least, judging by the little information they had.
Loch didn’t want to go up Main Street, but that was the direction they had to go.
He led Bobby back to where the rest of the two groups waited. The scouts had made a camp at one of the houses, taking it over. The five-man teams rotated out every couple of days. One always watched the grunts, the others resting.
Joining them was Loch’s party, larger than normal.
Harper and Piper were with him, along with Brian and Jenny. They were also joined by Davis Millman and Kyle Smith. He’d thought about bringing Julia but didn’t want to risk one of the few Healers on the raid. His group waited outside the house, Bobby’s inside.
“I’m heading back,” he told Loch, waiting for Loch’s acknowledgment.
Loch hated it. Since they’d gotten to the camp a couple of hours ago, the scouts hadn’t been able to think or act independently. Things that they would have done on their own, they had to ask him if it was okay.
“Hold up,” he told Bobby. “You’re going to come with us in the morning.”
“Huh?”
Loch pointed to Kyle.
“He’s going to take your place with the scouts,” Loch explained, ignoring the displeased look on Kyle’s face.
It was the same look he’d had since very early that morning when Loch had assembled the group in the lobby and headed out before the sun had even come up. He’d wanted to make it to the house the scouts were using for their base of operations before nightfall. They’d managed to get there with half an hour to spare.
Kyle hadn’t wanted to come along. He’d complained about being a hunter, not a fighter. But Loch didn’t care. The man had done a good job in the Resource Dungeon, showing that he could be a fighter if he wanted to. Loch didn’t want to push; they still needed hunters, but he knew they also needed ranged fighters for the various dungeon and adventuring teams. People were going to have to start heading out into the woods and further away dungeons. They were going to need a full Class setup. Kyle didn’t have much choice.
Loch hated forcing the man, but what choice did he have?
“You have the gaunt quest, right? Got it with Harper?”
“Yeah,” Bobby said.
“You’ll come with us to try and complete it,” Loch continued. “It’ll be good Spirit Experience and don’t want that opportunity to go to waste.”
“Yeah, okay.”
Bobby glanced at Kyle, unsure, but didn’t argue. Loch figured if they were all going to wait and let him tell them what to do, he’d reluctantly accept that role. But he’d do it his way and make every decision work for the betterment of the Clan as a whole.
Kyle would become a fighter. He could still be primarily a hunter, but he was going to have to learn to be a combat-ranged fighter. At least until others Leveled up.
“We may not be able to complete it,” Loch said. “The primary goal is getting the soil from the hardware store. But if we can, learning about the gaunts is just as important.”
“Why’s that?” one of the Bobby’s fellow scouts asked. Loch didn’t recognize the man.
“They don’t do anything. Figure they won’t bother us if we don’t bother them.”
“Are you willing to bet your life and the lives of everyone back in the school on that?” Loch asked, turning to face the man. He spoke calmly. It was a fair question. As was his answer.
The man visibly paled, shaking his head.
Loch sighed.
“None of us want to fight the gaunts. That wouldn’t be good for either side. A lot of people would die. But we have to be prepared for that to happen.”
The night passed quickly. Loch managed to get some sleep.
They set out early the next day.
The intersection where Main Street and Blake’s Mill across from it hit Route 4 was too close to the gaunts’ wall. Even with some decent tree coverage, Loch wanted to avoid the intersection. Bobby, who was now more familiar with the immediate area and its changes, along with Harper, led them into the woods well out of sight from the wall. Davis followed close behind.
Loch was afraid the young man would get jealous since Harper and Bobby were close together, talking quietly. But it seemed that Davis was not. The occasional looks Harper gave Davis over her shoulder probably helped.
They went at an angle through the thick woods, starting off closer to the road and increasing the distance as they walked. None of the scouts had reported gaunt patrols, but Loch wanted to be cautious. There were monsters roaming about and the sound of battle could draw the gaunts’ attention.
