CHAPTER THREE
Blood Scent
Day 64
Specter
With a furious hiss that echoed through the air, the monster thrashed against the earth, its sinewy limbs straining as it tried to rise. A violent, oppressive force slammed it back down, something cold and hard gripping its neck tighter. Thick, coarse fur of a fiery orange hue blanketed most of the creature’s slender frame, while patches of sickly, hairless skin bore grotesque, throbbing boils that seemed to pulse with a life of their own. Each eruption sent noxious green slime sizzling into the air, filling the space with a sharp, acrid odor.
Without warning, a sharp, agonizing pain ripped through the monster’s back, stealing its breath and severing all feeling in its lower extremities. In response, it thrashed its arms wildly, but each arm was then violently broken in a systematic, one-after-another casual manner. The pressure around its neck intensified, the sickening snap of its own bones breaking like brittle twigs filling its ears. With each agonizing second, its flesh tore under the merciless grip until everything suddenly ended, and the creature went limp.
After releasing its neck, Specter kept his camera fixed on the body, waiting for any movement. Break it up: After a few seconds passed with no twitch, he carefully grabbed the glass protrusion from the back of its skull and pulled until it slid loose. He rose to his feet, cradling the Glass carefully before sliding it into the backpack tied around his waist.
With a swift motion, he yanked the knife from the monster’s back and swung it to the side, shaking off the blood.
“Seven,” he muttered. His camera focused on the other corpse nearby, a mix of scales and drab fur, seeing his axe lodged in its neck. Specter moved toward it, extracted another piece of Glass, and stowed it in his backpack. “That makes eight.”
Afterwards, he pulled out his axe from the dead monster, scraping off bits of flesh. He scanned his surroundings again, noting the shoreline tinted by the light blue Sphere around him. On the other side, hundreds of trees and dense, twisted bushes stood shrouded in the night’s darkness.
‘That should be enough for two upgrade charges,’ he thought, recalling how Marcus still had 32 Glass left over after increasing his Stats. ‘I should head back, hand these over to him in the morning,’ he thought as he double-checked if he had closed his backpack.
As he did so, he remembered how Marcus had been in bad shape after the last round of upgrades. The man had looked pale and was still bleeding from his nose, even after hours of sleep. ‘Maybe it’s time to invest in Endurance again? Wouldn’t want Marcus to keel over now.’
Specter shook his head before crouching down, using his steel hands to scoop up dirt and shift it aside. He dug a hole deep enough to hide the two monsters, ensuring they were out of sight from any Breachers arriving in the morning.
‘Despite those eight dead buggers, I’ve hardly seen any others around. Normally I at least see larger scouting parties,’ Specter realized. ‘Feels like this place got thoroughly cleared during the day. Did some big guild sweep through?’
After shoving the dirt back in place and filling up the hole, he stamped the ground a few times.
“That’ll do it for today. Eight’s alright,” Specter said softly, eyeing the tree line again. The outline of a ruined building in the distance tugged at his focus. ‘Don’t,’ he thought, catching himself stepping toward the building.
‘That place is smack in the middle of this Sphere, where the Orb is located. No doubt it’s teeming with monsters that might be hard to spot, or they might be a lot stronger than me... But what if the Breachers cleared it out as well? There might not be any monsters left. This could be the perfect time to scout,’ he thought as he paused for a second.
He clenched the knife and axe tighter, his steel digits biting into the grips.
“This is a stupid idea,” Specter muttered as he took a step forward again.
- - -
Specter slipped into the entrance of the ruined restaurant, vines and roots entwining the decaying structure. Grime and dirt covered the tiles on the wall, while mold and rot marked the few intact floorboards. Pausing near the doorway to the main room, he heard movement and quickly crouched before setting his axe down and bracing his steel frame against the wall.
After a tense moment, a lanky monster crept into the room. As the creature turned its gaze toward him, Specter’s hand shot forward, gripping its neck tightly to silence it. With a swift motion, he drove his knife into the side of the creature’s skull, not stopping until the blade sank in completely. He quickly dragged the body out of sight from the doorway, twisting the blade to ensure the kill. Afterward, he pulled the Glass from the creature and retrieved his axe.
‘Nine,’ he thought, listening for any movements or signs of nearby monsters. As he did so, he noticed the scars of combat adorning the place he was standing in, with some being older while others appeared to have been recent additions.
‘Breachers,’ he noted, tracing steel fingers over bullet holes and cuts in the stone and rotten wood. He paused for a few more seconds, listening intently, almost freezing with each rustle of the wind moving dirt or sticks outside.
Gripping his weapons tightly, Specter dared to peer around the corner into the main hall. There, he vaguely made out three monsters: two behind the counter and one crouched on an old table, gnawing on bones. The creatures looked strange, with sickly fur, thin frames, and patches of scales around their limbs. One had a lizard-like face, while the others had foxlike features, all with crooked teeth.
‘Shit, three of ‘em.’ He retreated to his previous position, pressing himself against the wall, unsure about his next move. ‘I’m not human, so hopefully they can’t smell me. Let’s hope their vision is as bad as mine at night,’ he thought, crouching as he cautiously advanced, doing his best to stay quiet. His annoyance grew with every clink of his steel feet on the floorboards and broken tiles.
‘The next upgrade I want is rubber soles… that or something to see in the dark.’
Specter neared the monster by the table when one of his feet crashed through a rotten floorboard. ‘Crap!’ The three monsters’ attention instantly snapped to the disturbance, locking onto him. A chilling pause ensued, the four of them frozen in place for what felt like hours, though it was only a moment. One of the monsters behind the counter broke the tension by hissing before it jumped on the counter aggressively, only to have an axe strike its face, killing it instantly. The monster next to him lunged, but Specter reacted in time, grabbing its face midair before slamming it to the floor. Specter followed up by plunging his knife into the creature’s eye socket.
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As he prepared to finish it off, another monster barreled into him, slamming him into the floor and sending all three crashing through the weakened boards as it broke apart underneath them.
‘Shit, shit, shit!’ Specter thought as they plummeted into the basement below, the loud impact accompanying a small dust storm as bits of debris continued to fall down on top of them. Momentarily disoriented by the sudden change in scenery, Specter slowly became aware of one of the creatures on top of him, scratching at his plastic protective plating and the metal framework underneath.
“That’s it! Get the fuck off,” Specter yelled, pushing himself up. He jumped backward onto his back, slamming the monster and himself into the ground, shattering the tiles beneath them. Specter saw the monster’s limbs fall limp, then spun and smashed his steel fist into its face, hitting again and again until he broke through the skull and hit the ground beneath.
He barely had time to snap its head to the side at the sound of movement, seeing the last monster charging toward him, its movements erratic, a knife still protruding from its ruined eye. Specter quickly got up and allowed the monster to nearly reach him before delivering a swift front kick directly to the back of the blade. The blade shot further forward into the creature’s skull, emerging from the back of its head, ending its life.
‘Bloody hell, that was—’ thought, before a noise caught his attention. A powerful impact slammed into his side, sending him crashing into a support pillar, cracking the stone and bits of his plastic plating. ‘There was a fourth one?’ he thought, struggling to get up. He rolled aside, barely dodging the charging creature as it slammed into the same pillar.
Specter retreated, watching the larger monster back away from the damaged pillar, shaking its head as it started to circle him. The monster stood larger than its kin, its massive form made of foul-looking muscles, ragged fur, and sharp claws.
‘Did I just not see it before, or was it lying in wait in this room?’
The monster charged at him like a raging bull, but Specter swiftly stepped in, delivering a powerful punch to its face. The creature wobbled for a split second before roaring in madness. It swung wildly, but Specter ducked beneath the attack and retaliated with an uppercut that shattered the monster’s jaw, breaking dozens of its sharp teeth. Despite the brutal strike, the monster persisted, relentlessly slashing at Specter, tearing through more of the robot’s plastic plating and the worn black raincoat.
‘I swear I heard bones breaking, but the prick just keeps going. Doesn’t it feel pain?’ Specter thought, backing away and feinting punches to keep the monster at bay. ‘It’s larger and stronger than the rest. A new variant, perhaps? Or is it because we’re this close to the Orb?’ He recalled his previous encounters near an Orb, remembering the monsters he had faced back then.
The monster hissed and surged forward again, clawing and biting at Specter. It narrowly missed his vital components but still tore through protective plastic and gouged deep scratches into his steel frame. Specter nearly froze up as he witnessed the creature’s jaw snap back into place, seemingly healing itself.
“Focus, damn it,” Specter said out loud. He stepped back, using his scratched camera to scan frantically for an escape route, hindered by the darkness and scattered debris. A chill of fear settled into his mind. He realized he couldn’t overpower this enemy with brute strength alone, and he had no weapon to give him an edge.
“Stop thinking like Marcus... I’m Specter,” he muttered, his feet shifting on the dusty ground as he braced for the monster’s next onslaught. As it charged, Specter kicked up a cloud of dirt, disorienting the creature. He lunged forward and charged it while it was blinded. His unforgiving metallic form slammed into the monster’s knee, the sickening crunch of bone breaking echoing through the air as he crippled it with a violent tackle straight into the joint.
Rolling aside to evade a retaliatory claw strike, Specter scrambled to his feet, putting distance between himself and the injured creature. With its leg now shattered, the monster could only lurch and crawl in fury, hissing, and swiping at the air in frustration. Recalling the monsters’ regenerative abilities, Specter made his way toward one of the fallen creatures to retrieve his knife when he spotted a few dust covered beer kegs in the corner.
He paused for a split second, glancing at the knife before he stepped over the corpse and went towards the kegs. Testing a few, he found one still mostly full and heavy enough for what he needed. Lifting the steel keg overhead, he turned to face the still-living monster that was slowly crawling towards him, hissing and screeching.
“Almost there, buddy,” Specter calmly remarked, awaiting its approach. “Almost...”
Moments later, a loud impact echoed through the basement as the hissing abruptly stopped.
- - -
Several minutes later, Specter was about to leave the basement, having collected his gear and Glass pieces. He spotted a staircase leading upward, hoping it would take him back to the surface. Glancing at his left hand, he noticed a steel finger missing, the remaining metal fragments suggesting a monster had bitten it off at some point.
‘Marcus is going to chew me out for this,’ he thought, shaking his head as he looked at the missing plastic armor pieces and the scratch marks covering his metal frame. After flexing his remaining fingers a few times, Specter proceeded up the stairs.
Midway, he noticed a hole in the wall, hidden by vines and torn spiderwebs. He didn’t spot it until the vines rustled, revealing a draft coming through the hole. Curiosity tugged at him as he slowly knelt before the obstruction. Using his knife, Specter pushed aside the vines, revealing a rocky passage. Rock, dirt, and pebbles surrounded him, along with more vines and torn spiderwebs.
Advancing cautiously, Specter pushed through the overgrowth and cleared away webs, revealing a vast chamber beyond. Strange vegetation adorned the walls, with pulsating roots and translucent sacs holding monsters in various stages of development. Despite the darkness, he caught glimpses of movement and heard faint noises echoing within the chamber, hinting at the untold horrors that awaited within.
Just as he was about to peer over the edge to gauge the cave’s depth, a monster’s face suddenly appeared, climbing up from the ridge below. The creature, with its fox like features, had a startled expression before Specter swiftly plunged his blade into its throat before grabbing its head. With a firm hold on the creature, he relentlessly stabbed it until the creature’s body suddenly gave way and plunged backward, disappearing over the edge, leaving Specter with just the head.
‘That’s bad.’ It took a few moments for the sound of impact to reach him. ‘This place is enormous,’ he thought uneasily as the echo of the fall reverberated through the cavern, heightening the sense of danger.
The echo’s gradual disappearance sent an imaginary shiver down Specter’s metallic spine, realizing just how far the cave actually went. He quickly ripped the Glass fragment from the creature’s skull and stashed it in his backpack. As he peered inside the backpack, past the looted Glass, he also spotted the other items he had brought with him, including the two flares.
‘This is a terrible plan,’ he thought as he snatched one up nonetheless. Specter hesitated, his gaze fixed on the flare in his hand. ‘I shouldn’t do this… but I still don’t know the threat we’d be facing down there. 20 monsters? 100? 500?’
With a flicker of heat, the flare suddenly burst to life in his grip, casting a bright glow that bathed him in an eerie light. Its illumination danced across his steel plating, casting shimmering reflections that seemed to breathe life into his metallic form. Specter then peeked over the ledge once more before tossing the flare into the expansive chamber below.
As the flare descended, it illuminated the room, gradually unveiling its secrets. The cavern was teeming with hundreds of monsters, clinging to the walls or skittering across the twisting vines. Instead of a few sacks filled with monsters, he spotted dozens of them littering the space, each containing their own potential horrors, with some creatures already clawing their way out.
As the flare reached the bottom, it illuminated a seething mass of monstrous shapes entangled around a core of vines and roots, its faint glow obscured by the sheer density of all the creatures. Many of them froze up while watching the flare roll closer, their focus shifting instantly. In that brief moment, Specter glimpsed the Orb beneath their writhing mass, pulsating like a beacon. The flare eventually rolled to a stop against one of the monsters there, producing an angry hiss.
In response, most of the monsters inside the chamber turned their sights towards Specter’s position. With a collective roar, they charged, filling the chamber with footsteps and a hatred for anything living—metal or flesh. Not needing any more encouragement, Specter turned and scampered back through the passage.
‘Shit, shit, shit!’