___________________________
| NEW LOCATION DISCOVERED |
| BAYFIELD APARTMENTS |
|15 EXPERIENCE POINTS GAINED|
___________________________
The door of an old jalopy opens. A black boot steps out onto weathered cement pavement. Tough padded pants follow as the rest of the man exits the car. He shuts the door behind him and adjusts his light armor pads. He tightens the strap of the rifle slung around his back and butts the end of his spear on the ground.
A woman comes around from the drivers side of the vehicle. "I hope you remembered to lock it. We don't want another incident."
The man's face scrunches together as he turns towards her. She is dressed in the same attire as him: dark colors, protective pads, a spear in hand and a rifle slung around her back.
She laughs. "Your face! You look so confused!"
The man shakes his head. "I don't remember any "incidents" with the car..." He looks back at the jalopy. "And yes. I locked it."
The woman steps closer to him and pats him on the shoulder. "I know. I'm just messing with you."
The two break contact and peer around the area.
"It's pretty overcast. Wasn't the weather better during the ride here?" The woman asks. The man takes another look around the abandoned block, absorbing the plain view of small, aging houses and cloudy weather.
"You're right. It was better just a moment ago. Well whatever. You know how things are when you live by the water."
The woman grips her spear tighter.
"Yeah. I know."
They both turn towards a building that had been looming over them.
"Weird how these places are never anywhere nice." The man says. The woman takes off up a cement pathway that leads to the building's entrance. The man follows behind her.
"I'm sure they wouldn't let us know if these places appeared anywhere nice. You wouldn't want to tarnish anyone's reputation... they'd probably have government agents or maybe even a private squad clean it up instead."
The two climb some steps; the man uses his spear to help him up like a walking stick. "It would just be nice if we could go somewhere not as gloomy for a change. Maybe a beach?" he says, as they approach the entrance to the building. They stop and take another look around. The woman gazes up the building's multiple stories.
"This place is pretty torn up. How can you not appreciate the charm of a building that just oozes murderous intent?" The woman says. The man squeezes his lips together and narrows his eyes.
"I can think of... a few reasons. But, eh, how many experience points could we really get from relaxing at a beach anyway?"
He lifts his spear as he finishes his sentence and taps the steel blade on the door.
"See this sign?" The caution tape? Looks like we're the first takers. Should have plenty of those experience points."
The woman drops her gaze from the building's height and gets a better look at what the man was talking about.
"Danger!" She reads, "Licensed purifiers only! You have been warned!" She clicks her tongue. "These signs make no sense. The entry ways into dungeons are protected by barriers. The Federal Government isn't going to let a bunch of dumb kids go wandering into a Corruption Zone."
The man steps up to the door and uses his free hand to tear away the caution tape. As he touches the doorway a digital green, translucent, turtle shell pattern, energy field appears at the place of contact.
"Why don't they clear the place out when they first scout it? Why leave it here for people like us?"
The man pulls a cell phone out of his pocket. The woman does the same.
You got your Purifier license without learning about how the government handles everything? There are only so many teams of
Purifiers in the Corruption branch."
Both of the two lift their cell phones, screens facing the doorway. The woman calls out,
“Purifier Solbird! License activate!”
The man calls out,
“Purifier Hero of Steel! License activate!”
The turtle shell barrier appears in full across the doorway, shimmering, as the phones beam light onto it. The barrier shines brighter, greener. The design pulls itself apart from the edges of the doorway. The door opens itself inward.
The two pocket their cell phones.
"Anyway, yeah. There is another set of government agents in the Corruption branch that operate only as scouts. They follow up on reports of Corruption Zones and place barriers when needed. They also quarantine surrounding areas before leaving the dungeon for Purifiers to take care of. Of course, there are a few others that try to report and catalogue Corruption Zones, but the government agents typically have the best equipment for getting a safe and accurate assessment."
Solbird explains, as she takes the initiative. She steps to the door and, with her free hand, reaches up to her forehead where a light is strapped.
She presses a button on the side, activating a beam of light. The light pushes into the darkness of the building's entrance, exposing rows of mailboxes embedded in the walls. The woman steps inside, lifting her spear, gripping it with both hands.
"Wait." Says the man, quickly grabbing her arm. "You almost forgot your goggles."
The woman looks back at him. She frowns and tugs her arm away. "You're right. Rookie mistake."
The man turns his headlight on as well. He lifts some goggles that have been hanging around his neck to his eyes, even if awkwardly so, while trying to balance his spear between his legs.
The woman places her spear against the wall and lifts her goggles to her eyes.
As the goggles are fastened to their heads a window appears in them.
____________________________
|VIRTUAL INTERFACE ACTIVATED|
| ..…...SYSTEM BOOTING……. |
___________________________
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
Little windows and bars, parts of a user interface, blink into existence in the goggles. In the upper left hand corner a green bar with the word -HEALTH- in black in it appears. Another bar, connected to the bottom of it, also appears in yellow. This bar has the word -ENERGY- in it. Under these bars, a circular icon with their party members' picture appears and to the immediate right of that, a health bar and energy bar with their name inside of it. These party member bars are smaller than that of their own bars.
The woman grabs her spear from the wall. She readies it again.
"These are pretty convenient, eh?" Asks the man, as the woman slowly stalks her way through the entrance border. He follows behind her.
"Pretty interesting," She replies in a whisper. "Technology makes many things more convenient. In the past you would have to visit an Analysis Cleric to see what kind of stats you have, how many experience points you have, what level you are, etc. At least until you mastered the analysis spell yourself. Nowadays, we have apps on our cell phones that have all of that information preloaded for us."
As they creep their way down the hallway, they approach a door in the wall. Solbird looks back at Steel and they nod at each other. Solbird turns and stands directly in front of the door. She points her spear at it. Steel presses against the wall next to it and grabs the door handle. Steel turns the handle as Solbird uses her spear to creep the door open.
Solbird pushes the door open halfway then nods at Steel. Steel nods back and slinks forward. Ducking under Sol's spear, he enters the room. His light splashes into it, painting the shadows with light. Using his spear, Steel presses the door the rest of the way open, pushing it, silently, as far as it will go. He advances further into the room.
His light reveals a laundry room lined with washing and drying machines. There are two rows of washing machines running through the center of the room, sitting back to back, creating two open rows for walking between them and the dryers situated against the walls.
The man continues advancing into the room until he reaches the walking aisle on the far side of the room. The woman slinks in behind him, turning in towards the other aisle. Steel sweeps his light up the aisle until he catches the sight of something laying in the middle of the aisle.
"There's something in here." He whispers.
"Be careful." She whispers back. "I don't see anything suspicious."
They both creep down the aisles with their spears ready, often swiveling them back and forth between the sides of the rows. Soon enough, the man reaches what he spotted in the aisle. He stops and gazes down upon a bundle of clothes.
"Scan." He whispers. In his goggles, a digital red rectangle appears over the bundle of clothes. The bar slowly fills with red as the scanning process goes to work. As he waits, Solbird continues slinking down the aisle.
Her headlight sweeps across the room, back and forth, as she constantly surveys for anything dangerous or otherwise. She stops to glance into machines every now and then, but doesn't find anything in them.
As she closes in on the end of the aisle, she spots something propped up in a wooden chair resting against the tiled wall. Her headlight drops to its feet and, moving up, slowly reveals a set of bones in the chair. It's skull is tilted back against the wall and it's arms are dangling loose by its sides.
In the man's goggles, the scanning bar reaches completion. It drops downward and fades away at the bottom of the goggles as another rectangular window of information appears in its place.
____________________
|POSSIBLY DANGEROUS|
|ANALYSIS INCOMPLETE|
| SUBJECT BLOCKED |
____________________
"Damn." He says out loud to himself. Loosening the grip on his spear, he pushes it's sharpened, metallic tip forward. He places the blade under some of the cloth and lifts it aside. Underneath are stark white bones.
"Oh shi-!" He starts as the bones suddenly shake and lift from the ground. He performs a quick backstep as the bones hover off of the ground and form together into a skeleton in front of his eyes.
"Skeletons!" The woman yells as a skeleton leaps from the chair, swinging it's boney hands at her.
Steel smashes his spear into the skeleton's side, causing it to stutter sideways and involuntarily swing it's skull into a washing machine. The machine responds with a deep doof as the skeleton’s skull bounces off of it. In the User Interface of the goggles, a number appears over the skeleton.
The plain white number, displayed in a wide and easy to read 3-dimensional bold font, floats up and fades away.
[-12 Health Points]
The man pulls his spear back and chances a glance at Solbird.
"How do we cut skeletons again? All I did was accidentally push it into the washing machine. But like, really hard."
In the other aisle, a skeleton lunges towards Solbird. Solbird jams her spear into the skeleton's eye socket. She thrusts the spear through with great effort and smashes the tip into the back of the skeleton's skull, from the inside. The skeleton's lunge stops short and for a moment, it's boney body clatters and flails in midair as its momentum is forced towards the opposite direction.
[-22 Health Points]
"Just smash em'!" She calls back to him. "Smash em' really, really hard!"
Steel swings his spear back into the skeleton but doesn't make full contact. As the skeleton teeters, catching it's balance, Steel misses and only scratches at the surface of it's face. His miss causes him to accidentally swing the spear over the row of washing machines as the skeleton in front of him finally gets it's bearings back.
As the forward velocity of the skeleton resists Solbird's spear jab, the woman is pushed off of her balance. She stumbles backwards as the skeleton's body touches down and resumes a normal standing posture, though with her spear in it's face. As she stumbles backwards, her swiveling headlight throws a reflection off of something silver swinging her way. She gasps, "ah!," and drops into a crouch as fast as she can. The tip of Steel's spear swings over her.
With a bead of sweat dripping down the side of her temple, Solbird springs back upward and shoves her spear harder against the back of the skeleton's skull. The skeleton's head flicks backward, bones crackling, and causes it to stumble.
The skeleton staggers backwards off of the end of Solbird's spear as the damage numbers appear over it.
[-20 Health Points]
The spear passes back over the washing machines as the man releases his grip on the spear. The body of the spear catches the man's shoulder. He sways slightly with the spear's movement, causing the spear to spin around his shoulders. As the spear comes around to the other side, he catches it and smacks it back into the skeleton with such force that it whistles through the air. The skeleton flops into the washing machine again, but this time remembers the motion and uses it's boney arm to stop it's skull from crashing into the machine.
[-25 Health Points]
As the skeleton Steel is facing clatters into the washing machine, Solbird slides her back foot forward and grabs her spear tight with both hands. Gripping near the back of the spear, she swings it, like a bat, as hard as she can, at the skeleton's unprotected leg bones. The spear cracks into it's shins and carries through, entirely sweeping it off of it's feet. It clatters loudly to the ground.
[-15 Health Points]
Solbird steps up to the skeleton and brings her spear over it, blunt end facing downward. She roars, "Haa!" The spear rockets down and breaks right through the side of the skeleton's skull with a loud cracking sound like cheap thunder. The skull doesn't shatter entirely but a powerful hole is left in it, with vein like cracks of damage spreading throughout.
[- 30 Health Points]
A message appears at the top of Solbird's goggles.
____________________________
| ENEMY INCAPACITATED |
| MOST LIKELY DEAD |
| FRAIL SKELETON DEFEATED |
|20 EXPERIENCE POINTS GAINED|
____________________________
With a smug half-smile breaking out on her face, Solbird whips her hair from her now sweaty face. She pulls the spear from the skeleton's skull and looks over the machines at Steel, who was in the middle of performing a back-jump to gain distance from the skeleton.
"Try this!" He calls out. Steel turns his body sideways and pulls his spear back, in both hands, as far as his elbows and shoulder will allow him. He bends his knees and shouts, "Eagle's Beak Dive!" A golden shimmer radiates from him as, without moving a muscle, he suddenly plummets forward as if on rails.
As he reaches the skeleton his body stops completely. A bright golden glow shines from him momentarily as he puts all of the sudden kinetic energy into thrusting his spear forward as if it were a bullet in his hands. The blade on the spear cracks straight through the skeleton's skull, from it's nose hole out of the back of it's head. Almost as quickly as it started, his attack stops.
[-40 Health Points]
A damage indicator number is displayed above the skeleton. However, instead of the usual plain white coloration, the number displays in a bright golden font. Fading up to the right of it, another message was displayed similarly.
[Light Element]
Which made the display come out looking like,
[- 40 Health Points] [Light Element]
Then the battle messages started displaying in his goggles.
____________________________
| ENEMY INCAPACITATED |
| MOST LIKELY DEAD |
| FRAIL SKELETON DEFEATED |
|20 EXPERIENCE POINTS GAINED|
____________________________
In Solbird's goggles, a second type of numbered indicator appears above Steel. However, this number displays in a yellow font.
[-10 Energy Points]
The skeleton goes limp, bones clattering against itself as whatever energy held it together leaves it. The skeleton drops to the ground with Steel still gripping his spear in it's face. He puts a foot on it and wrestles the spear from it's bones.