I fight a few packs of monsters before I get home, but other than that, it goes without incident.
In a bout of good news, my house is just like I left it. The walls aren’t torn down, the windows and doors aren’t broken, so I sigh in relief. People fled this area altogether, so the houses went unlooted by survivors and undisturbed by the monsters.
I still run a lap through the neighborhood just to make sure, and I’m glad I do. One of my neighbors left their garage door half open, having tried and given up on pushing his car out into the street. The vehicle now holds the door open, and I can see a swarm of insect monsters inside.
They look like black beetles, ranging from cat sized to Tibetan mastiff sized. One of them is a lot bigger, though I can’t make out its exact dimensions without getting closer and opening the garage door fully.
At the very least, it’s bigger than the car.
“God damn it,” I complain, but I crack my fingers and approach the house.
On a closer inspection, the bugs have taken over the inside of the entire house. I can’t get an exact count, seeing as they skitter around and I only catch glimpses of them through the windows, but I figure there are a few dozen of them at the very least.
Of my initial arsenal of impromptu weapons, I only still have the crowbar. Even though it’s only been a week, a blip in the grand scheme of things, pulling it out as I’m about to face oversized bugs fills me with a weird sense of nostalgia.
I contemplate my next move as I go up the lawn, and I decide to go in through the house. That way, I can clear out the smaller bugs before I face the big guy. It's not that I'm afraid of getting swarmed, but I'd rather avoid it if I can.
The sounds of chitinous legs clacking on hardwood gets louder as I approach the front door. I heft the crowbar as I reach for the knob, readying myself for battle. The door is locked, and when I use a bit more strength to force it open, nothing happens.
That's weird. With my current strength attribute, I should be able to tear apart the entire front wall with a solid push. The only explanation is that, for whatever reason, the system is reinforcing the structure.
I go around, trying the back door, but I get a similar result. Not even the windows will shatter, no matter how hard I hit them. Out of desperation, I slam the house with a momentum enhanced ground pound, trying to bring the whole thing down.
The explosion of force shakes the ground and sends chunks of lawn flying in all directions, but I bounce right off the wall. I don't even manage to put a dent in it.
What I do manage is to give the bugs a good scare. Although the ground pound doesn't affect the structure itself, it rattles the insides. The few bugs I can see through the windows scramble deeper into the house.
“Through the garage it is,” I resign myself to the obvious set piece.
The ground pound disturbed the big guy as well, and I find it clawing at the inside of the garage door when I come back around to the front of the house. It lets out these shrill sounds that rake my eardrums, sounding a lot like an oversized cricket.
I remember that I still haven't spent the attribute and skill points from the level-ups, so I do it now to give myself a boost before I rush into the fight.
Ending the siege pushed me all the way to level 8, giving me 24 free attribute points and 3 skills points. The latter are easier, I just split them equally between the three skills. The 24 attribute points get divided as well, and I end up spending 9 points into constitution, 14 into strength, and the last point goes into perception.
Jack Harrington - Level 8.
Race: Human, Male.
Titles: Power Hungry, Champion of Stelver.
Class: Wavebreaker (expert).
Class Stage: Basic.
Experience to next level: 55780/183005.
Health: 370/370.
Mana: 80/80.
Stamina: 365/365.
Attributes
Constitution: 25.
Strength: 50.
Agility: 24.
Perception: 15.
Charisma: 10.
Essence: 8.
Spirit: 7.
I’ll have to put some points into essence and spirit as well in the near future, seeing as my skills require more and more mana. As for charisma, I still have no idea what exactly it does. But overall, my focus is on the strength attribute. The battle against Bruin was a sobering lesson: resilience and big mana reserves are nothing if you don’t have the strength to end the fight.
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At any rate, with the attribute and skill points now allocated, it’s time I do some monster killing. I take a running start towards the garage, trigger a dash as I get near, and I drop into a slide a fraction of a second before I hit the door. The momentum carries me into the house and right under the big beetle monster.
I hit its underside with a ground pound that consumes all of my momentum, bringing me to a full stop on my back. The bug goes flying into the ceiling, but it bounces right off and comes crashing back down on top of me. Bones break as I get flattened against the concrete which doesn’t give way.
In the next moment, the bug bounces and ricochets off the walls of the garage multiple times. It happens too fast for me to register the whole sequence of events, but by the end, it pushes the car completely out of the garage and allows the door to close.
“Fuuu…”
My entrance was a bit more bombastic than I’d hoped, but I can work with it. I peel myself off the ground, dazed and hurting all over, and I start swinging to build up some frenzy. The big bug is in a corner, stunned and unable to flip itself over, but there are plenty smaller bugs for me to kill.
Each hit with the crowbar deforms the tool in my hands, but it launches handfuls of the critters around. They explode like watermelons as they hit the unnaturally strong walls, showering me with bug guts. Experience and frenzy come flooding in, and distracted by the carnage, I miss the big bug picking itself up. It rushes me in the small space, picking me up with its mandibles and slamming me into the ceiling. The collision forces the air out of my lungs, and the bug is far from done with me. It thrashes around, swinging its head every which way and using me like a wrecking ball.
Shelves, tool cabinets, work tables, none stand a chance. My health drops like a stone as I accumulate more and more damage, but I’m not dissuaded. I drop the mangled crowbar and grab a hold of the bug’s mandibles, forcing them open with my bare hands. The sturdy, mana infused chitin cracks in my grip, but I can’t quite tear the mandibles off.
The big bug squeals, but I manage to free myself. I get my feet under me, and still holding onto its mandibles, I try to swing it around. The cramped space does neither one of us any favors, stopping me from flipping it over or throwing it away.
More of the small beetles flood into the garage from the main house as me and the big guy pit our strength against each other in a tug of war, and I see them gathering at the edges of the room from the corners of my eyes. They lift their heads and click their mandibles together, producing a cascade of chittering sounds that make my innards vibrate.
I wonder for a moment if it’s some kind of sonic attack, but that’s not it. The big beetle gets steadily stronger, and before long, it starts pushing me back.
I use analyze on it and a few of the smaller beetles to see what’s going on.
Knight Beetle - Level 35.
Health: 332/557.
Mana: 120/120.
Status Effects: Encouragement.
Squire Beetle - Level 20.
Health: 233/233.
Mana: 10/20.
So the squires give the knight a boost. And with more of them making their way into the garage by the second, I have no way of winning. I can already barely hold the knight beetle back, and it’s only a matter of time before it’ll overpower me completely.
I make a split second decision to disengage, but with the garage door now closed, I have no way out. I’m locked in, having to finish what I started. I let go of one of the mandibles and form a fist, loading a ground pound into it. Then I pull myself closer to the knight beetle, and I unload the skill right in its head.
The garage turns into a maelstrom of debris as the force of the explosion pushes everyone and everything around. I myself get thrown at a wall, feeling a few more bones breaking. After I bounce off of it and the floor, I take off on all fours towards the inner door that leads to the house.
I make it in right in time to avoid the knight beetle grabbing my ass with the mandibles. The doorway is too narrow for it to pass through, and the indestructible walls stop it from following.
But even though I get away from it, I'm still not out of danger. I need a few minutes to heal and catch my breath, but the squire beetles can follow just fine.
With a grunt and gritted teeth, I climb to my feet and start stomping them with my boots.
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My stamina is depleted and my health is down to 20% by the time I get a breather. I didn't manage to kill all of the squire beetles, but I got about thirty of the fuckers.
The rest fled at some point, hiding deeper into the house or returning to the garage and the protection of the knight beetle.
We leave the living room a wreck of broken furniture and corpses, with me sprawled on my back in the middle of the chaos, struggling for breath. As I wait for the system to heal me, I finally notice my notifications folder flashing.
I open it up and browse through it, keeping an eye on my surroundings just in case. It's mostly a barrage of kill notifications, but two of them further up are a little more interesting.
New location discovered: Monster Nest (Knight Beetle).
Local event added: Nesting Grounds.
Check your "events” tab for more details.
Quest added: Spawn Camping.
Check your “quests” tab for more details.
This raises some alarms, so I pull up the event and the quest.
Event: Nesting Grounds.
Type: Local.
Description: The monsters in the area were allowed to run rampant. With no coordinated opposition to contain their growth, they formed a nest and began reproducing at a higher than normal rate.
Quest: Spawn Camping.
Description: You have discovered a monster nest that, if left unchecked, will take over its surroundings and push out other monster types. Destroy the nest to stop its spread, or protect the nest and guide its evolution.
Requirements:
-Kill the Knight Beetle to destroy the nest (0/1).
OR
-Protect the nest from other monster types (2 months, 29 days, 23 hours, 27 minutes left).
Rewards:
-20000 experience, 1500 system credits.
OR
-1 Settlement Dungeon Core.
Additional details: This is a branching quest. Only one objective may be completed. Only one reward may be claimed, depending on the completed objective.
“Interesting,” I mumble to myself.
All of the information leads me to believe that I might be able to create and control a dungeon in the town. That has the potential to be very useful, but not this close to my house. Nothing in the descriptions of the event or the accompanying quest hints at this being a unique situation, so I decide I’ll clear out this particular nest.
With my health at around 60%, I get up and start going through the house to kill the squire beetles first.