Now that I know what I'm doing, killing the rest of the beetles is easy. I stomp them under my boots, keeping the crowbar in reserve for when I need to smack away the ones that get too close.
I take a bit of time to experiment with my stamina meter, and I'm glad I do. As it turns out, a fully depleted stamina takes much longer to refill than a partially depleted one. With that in mind, I kill beetles until I'm down to about 10 stamina. Then I retreat, wait a minute, and wade right back in.
There are many more on the street now, and I notice other insects mixed in as well. Ants, centipedes, pill bugs, even a few mantises. The latter are nasty little fucks, leaping forward and slashing at my shins with their knife-sized claws.
I kill them in droves, racking experience as the street fills with bug corpses. Problem is that they come faster than I can deal with them.
People flock to their windows after a while, watching me as I spread carnage. But no one jumps in to help, and I don't call on them either. Last thing I need is a bunch of scared people running around and losing their shit when the first monster bites them.
Some ten minutes and about fifty kills later, as I step back for another short stamina break, one of the beetles that's crawling towards me stops abruptly. It starts trembling and making weird noises, popping and creaking as if it's about to explode.
I speed up, putting more distance between me and the shaking beetle. But it doesn't explode, oh no. It does something much worse. It starts growing, resizing, rapidly gaining length and height.
“What the…”
Cyan mist condenses around it from the air, flooding its body as if to fuel the growth. Some of the chitinous plates sprout sharp protrusions, and its entire carapace — or whatever bugs have — shines as if it's been freshly polished.
The transformation doesn't take long, maybe half a minute at most. When it's done, the beetle is a level 2. It's also the size of a God damned german shepherd, which means that when it inevitably comes at me again, it moves much faster.
The smaller beetles get bowled out of its way, and some even get killed. I ready the crowbar and my spirit.
When the beetle gets close, I jump out of the way. Its oversized jaws snap at empty air with an audible whoosh and a clack. I rush it from the side, swinging the crowbar downwards with both hands as hard as I can. The strike lands, but the crowbar bounces right off and hits me square in the face.
Pain explodes through my head. I jump back, with the claw end of the crowbar embedded into my skull. My nose is ruined, spewing blood like a fountain, and I can't see with my right eye.
“Fuuuuuck!”
I grit my teeth and they rattle. A few come loose, and I spit them out along with a mouthful of blood. That single blow did more damage to me than the monsters have managed so far. The pain is horrible, pulsing through my bones and rippling down my neck.
“Okay, ow, fuck. Deep breaths,” I tell myself. “Please, please, please heal this shit right.”
I hold the crowbar steady, take a deep inhale, and I yank it out before I can get cold feet about it. The claw rips away with a sickening squelch, taking flesh and skin with it. Blood geysers out of the open wound, staining the front of my body and flooding my mouth.
The system healing kicks in, but it’s slow. I feel it trying to stem the blood flow, rearranging and regrowing veins as it needs to. It works in layers, which will take a while. I retreat further away from the beetle, unable to focus on fighting it when my face hurts this badly.
A window opens on a nearby house, and a man pokes his head out. His name is Jonah, though I only know him in passing. I helped refurbish his back patio a couple of years back.
“Need help?”
“What do you think?!” I gurgle a response.
When I turn to face him, my mangled visage gives him a good scare. Jonah recoils and hits the back of his head, swearing up a storm as he retreats inside. The window closes.
“Why even offer?!” I yell.
I take another deep breath to calm down, which only makes the pain worse. But fuck it, I don’t have time to wait until I’m all nice and healed up. An entire street’s worth of monsters is converging on me. I grit my teeth and get back to it, but I need a new strategy.
I jump the big beetle, dodge its jaws again, and I jab the chisel end of the crowbar down. It pierces the joint where the monster’s head meets the torso, plunging a good few inches into its flesh. That angers the monster and it starts thrashing about. I try to leverage the crowbar and split its carapace wide open, but my blood soaked hands slip and I lose my grip on it.
Its jaws snap wildly, so I don’t even try to get a hold of the crowbar again. I retreat a few steps and pull out the sledgehammer, waiting for an opening. When the beetle presents one, turning its back to me for a split second, I rush in and slam it. The heavy sledgehammer doesn’t bounce off, instead putting a big dent into its carapace.
This is definitely the way to do it, but it’s also doing a number on me. It takes me much longer to recover, time that the beetle uses to turn around sharply and get a nip in. Only the tips of its jaws make contact, but it’s enough. They go right through my jacket and into my chest, cracking a couple of ribs and leaving a huge gash across my torso.
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That takes away another generous chunk of health, and I’m forced to retreat once more.
“This…is a slog…” I complain.
I sort of had the right idea with the crowbar, but my execution was poor. Resolving not to make that mistake a second time, I wait for the beetle to charge. When it does, I dodge the jaws and swing the sledgehammer in a horizontal arc that catches the monster in the side. The attack puts another dent into its exoskeleton, but more importantly, it topples the beetle. I pull out a chisel and jump on top of it before it can flip back, and I drive the chisel into a joint on its abdomen.
Its legs rake mine, tearing long, thin strips into my jeans and skin. The jaws snap repeatedly, only inches away from my ass. But I’m determined. I raise the sledgehammer high over my head and bring it down onto the chisel, driving it deeper.
“Just…fucking…die…” I growl as I hit the chisel over and over again.
It goes into the monster’s abdomen up to the handle, at which point I start hitting the chisel on the side. The beetle’s thrashing intensifies as I slowly pull one of its chitin plates off, lifting it until I can fit my hands under it. I plunge my fingers in and heave, ripping the plate away and exposing the bug’s innards.
It’s still not dead, and I’m gasping for breath, almost out of stamina.
But I can’t stop, so I shove my hands into its guts. I pull and rip and tear, throwing weird intestines and sacks and whatever other organs bugs have over my shoulders. Fight slowly, ever so God damned slowly, leaves the beetle. By the time it dies, I myself am a wreck.
I get off of it and try to get to my feet, but I stumble. My stamina meter flashes with depletion.
The other monsters surround me, and I think yep, this is it. I’m a goner. There’s no way I’ll make it out of this. But then a door crashes open, and Jonah charges into the street waving a shotgun.
He yells some incoherent words as he shoots left and right, shearing through groups of the monsters with every loud bang. More doors open, and more of my neighbors come flooding out. Some wield firearms, others have improvised weapons, but everyone gets to work.
I grin at the whole scene.
----------------------------------------
I rejoin the fight as soon as I have stamina to spare, and we mop up the monsters pretty quickly. More of them have those rapid growth spurts, but none quite reach the size of that one dead beetle that still has my crowbar in its neck.
Do beetles even have necks?
Whatever. They grow, but it’s not enough. After most of the small fry are dead, we form groups of two or three and deal with the bigger ones. We flip them over and attack their underside, and a few guys even grab them to hold them steady.
I’m almost healed by the time we’re done, and to my relief, said healing is thorough. My eye — that got popped by the crowbar’s claw — regrows, and I regain my vision. Bones reform, flesh knits itself back together, skin spreads to cover the wounds without leaving behind as much as a hint of a scar. Even my teeth grow back, which is just all kinds of amazing.
Dentists are fucked, though.
After the last bug is killed off, everyone stops. Silence engulfs the street for a long moment, and we’re all just looking around at each other. All of us are covered in torn clothes and gore, and some people still have injuries that aren’t done healing.
Then the first person lifts their weapon of choice — a fire poker that’s now sporting multiple bends — up in the air and shouts “fuck yeah!” That breaks the floodgates, and everyone else follows suit. Chants of fuck yeah, fuck yeah fill the air, and a few of them even give off a few shots.
I join in, laughing at the madness of the moment.
“Okay, okay,” I say after a while, waving everyone down. “We did it, but the night is far from over. Let’s all hold our horses until we’re actually safe.”
“Party pooper!” Someone says from the back of the crowd.
“So what should we do?” Jonah asks.
I answer as I trudge towards the big beetle to retrieve my crowbar. “Select your classes if you haven’t already. Then either stay put here and fight the monsters as they come, or go somewhere else where it might be safer.”
People exchange worried glances, and I can see the gears turning in their heads. I reach the beetle, flip it over, and try to work the crowbar free.
“Where would it be safer?” Jonah continues.
“Dunno,” I grunt.
The crowbar pulls out with a sucking sound that turns my stomach. I put it back into inventory and lean down over the beetle’s corpse, trying a few mental commands to see if I can loot it. Not that I expect it to drop money or gear, but monsters usually drop body parts as loot in most games.
None of the commands I can think of do anything. I wonder if that’s because the monsters aren’t done evolving, or if they simply don’t drop any loot in the first place. The second option might be the case, seeing as the bodies don’t evaporate. We might need to butcher the more valuable corpses for materials, but that’s something to figure out later.
“Where are the authorities?” Someone else asks. “Where’s your father? Did you get through to him before the lines went dead?”
That sends a wave of whispering through the crowd, people asking each other if they managed to call 911 or if anyone knows what exactly is going on.
“Not sure where Pops is, but he’s probably out and about. Same for the other cops, they likely have their hands full.”
I look through my interface as I talk, bringing up the notifications. Turns out I killed another 78 monsters and I got 1424 experience points out of it. That puts me at 2496 experience total, which is still quite a ways away from what I need for level 2. But I’m getting there.
“I don’t think anyone’s coming to our rescue,” I continue, “so it’s up to you to save yourselves. Like I said, either stay here and fight the monsters as they come, or go somewhere safer. I have a feeling a lot of people will gather downtown, so that’s your best bet.”
A few of them nod, some others turn and go back inside without another word, but everyone has one thing in common: they’re all afraid.
“Right. I’ll be doing that, then,” Jonah declares. A few pairs of eyes turn on him, so he quickly clarifies, “I’m heading downtown. If anyone wants to join, feel free to.”
They talk a little more, and a couple minutes later, everyone goes back inside to gather supplies. I turn to leave.
“What about you? Not coming?” Jonah asks.
“I’ll join you guys there later,” I say, not breaking stride. “But I have to go find someone first.”
Jonah doesn’t say anything else, going to get his own supplies. I leave them behind, hoping they’ll be able to fend for themselves.