Under their breaths they both whisper,
"Scan."
The figure steps closer as the goggles trace the man's outline. A loading bar starts to fill up with red.
Steps reverberate deeply, louder and louder, as the person in the suit slowly gets closer. Every reverberation brings the person more into focus, reveals another feature. Dark black shades. Gray, colorless skin. Pieces of flesh missing. Bald head.
"Oh man." Steel says. "Is that a government agent... zombie?"
"I don't know." The woman answers quietly. "The scan hasn't finished yet. I've never seen an enemy like that. Not in a suit, and definitely not in an apartment complex."
The suited thing stops walking forward. It crosses it’s arms and shouts, "Leave!" The shout echoes powerfully. A violent pressure unleashes from it and whips across the hallway and pushes against the pair. They put their arms up to resist being pushed back.
"Holy ! You were right!" Steel yells.
"The scan! Check the scan!" Solbird yells back.
"The scan's done!" A name appears at the top of their goggles. A large neon red bar appears around the name.
[ REVENANT ]
"I'm checking the compendium app for more information!" Steel yells, ripping his phone out and slamming his thumbs across the screen.
Softly, while taking a step back, Solbird says, "R-r-revenant... It's a revenant..."
Steel's eyes spread as wide as they can as he speeds to the app on his phone. "Yeah. It's a revenant. And these things are bad news. They're strong. Way too strong. We have to run, we have to run now!"
Solbird turns and sprints down the hallway. Steel smashes the phone into his pocket and joins her.
"Oof!" Solbird lets out as she crashes into nothing in the air, coming to a complete stop. The man skids to a stop, falling forward and smacking his face onto nothing in front of him. He gathers his bearings and quickly helps Solbird get hers back.
"Invisible wall?" Steel asks. Solbird nods. "Then this is basically a boss fight." Steel says. Solbird takes a deep breath and turns back towards the revenant.
"Yeah. Either we fight. Or we die."
The revenant stomps it's foot. "Leave!" It shouts again. The pressure blasts down the hall. The two brace themselves but are pushed back against the wall. Steel recovers and shouts back at the revenant.
"Hey! What kind of moron tells people to leave but puts barriers up everywhere?! Alright, Solbird, I'm ready to re-kill another monster."
Solbird grips her spear tightly and raises it’s point forward.
"I guess we've got no choice. No more time for mistakes!"
The revenant reaches into it's suit with both hands. The two Purifiers shout and run down the hallway towards it. Two large handguns slide out from under it’s suit. Their silver polish gleams in the headlights as they slide out. The revenant points them at the pair of Purifiers. Steel dives to the side. Solbird swings her spear behind her with one hand and pushes her palm out towards the revenant with the other, shouting, "Turtle!"
[-5 Energy]
The revenant fires it’s hand cannons. The bullets speeding towards Solbird slap into a transparent field, revealing a green, turtle shell pattern wherever they strike and drop from. The other bullets whiz by. She doesn't lose a second of time in her sprint.
Steel drops his spear and swivels his rifle from his back. He kneels and presses the butt of the gun to his shoulder. He grips it and squeezes the trigger. The rifle explodes with noise, bullets bursting from the barrel. The bullets sink through the revenant and out the other side. It's shoulders are rocked back and forth from the bullets slapping into either side of it's body. This causes it's aim to falter. It's handgun shots plume out wildly in all directions.
[- 0 Health Points]
[- 0 Health Points]
[- 0 Health Points]
[- 0 Health Points]
The damage indication numbers appear and fade above the revenant as more and more bullets sink through it. Each continues to do no damage at all.
Steel hits the end of the clip of his rifle with a clicking sound at the same time that the revenant drops the mags from his handguns.
Solbird drops her force field and swings the spear back into both hands. She slams into the revenant and shoves the spear deep into it's gut. They topple over and crash into the ground.
[-25 Health Points]
A sliver of the revenant's health bar turns black at the right end of the bar.
Steel throws the rifle downward, causing it to swing around into place on his back. He grabs the spear and hurries towards the woman and the revenant.
Solbird finds herself in a mount on the revenant. With both hands on the spear, she pulls it downward deeper into the revenant's stomach, until it hits the floor under him.
Holding it pinned she yells, "Imbue fire!" Yellow, orange and red energy swirls around her hands and into the spear. A plume of smoke rises from the revenant's wound.
[-10 Health Points] [Fire Element]
The damage indication number is displayed in red, yellow and orange to indicate fire damage.
The amount in the bar that goes down is barely noticeable.
The revenant pulls a large combat knife from it's hip. It thrusts the knife directly towards the center of Solbird's chest. Her eyes spread wide. She lets go of the spear and throws her arms up. The knife plunges into her forearm.
[-20 Health Points]
The flaming spear continues to burn at the revenant.
[-10 Health Points] [Fire Element]
Steel approaches and, holding the spear in both hands, thrusts the spear into the side of the revenant's skull.
[-50 Health Points] [Critical!]
The damage indication number is displayed only in orange as a way to indicate a critical hit. The amount in the bar is reduced by more of a chunk, getting the health bar close to the halfway point.
The revenant opens it's mouth wide and shouts. Extreme kinetic force explodes from it. Solbird's spear comes out of it's chest as Solbird is lifted off of it and thrown a couple feet away backwards. Steel stumbles backwards into the wall, his spear stuck inside of the revenant's head.
The revenant sits forward at the hips. It bends it's knees and climbs to it's feet. It turns, leans and shouts directly at Steel, who is thrown back harder into the wall. The revenant then sprints into Steel and slams a shoulder into him. Steel releases an "Ooof..." as all of the air exits his lungs. He flails around for something to grab on to and manages to grab his own spear.
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Managing to get a good grip on it, Steel tears the spear towards himself, ripping it out of the revenant's head. The blade flings backwards out of the revenant's head and even throws some bits of flesh and skull out with it.
The revenant grabs the man's face with it's large, undead hand. It squeezes, muscles bulging, veins bulging.
[-10 Health Points]
The revenant pulls Steel back and smashes his head into and through the wall.
[-30 Health Points]
Steel takes the spear and, without being able to see through the revenant, jams the spear's tip back into the revenant's ribs.
[-25 Health Points]
The revenant pulls Steel's head back through the wall. It's muscles grow as it charges to smash him through it again when suddenly another spear pierces through the revenant's side. It goes in and cuts through until it comes out of the other side. The revenant roars in pain.
[-40 Health Points]
The roar unleashes a shockwave of power. The woman stumbles backward and falls onto her butt. Steel's clothes ripple in the wave of power. Even their headlights blink on and off as the energy pushes outward.
The revenant turns and throws Steel, by his face, at Solbird. Solbird's eyes widen. She throws herself into a messy side roll, almost flopping over herself rather than rolling. She moves out of the way just in time as Steel crashes onto the floor, face first, next to her.
"Looks like he went to the gym." Solbird comments. Steel pushes himself to his knees.
"Yeah! A lot! He smashed my face through the wall! You saw that, right?"
Solbird points at the revenant. "What I see is, my spear should have put that thing on the floor. If we don't take care of this monster, it could do some serious damage to a lot of innocent people."
"Based on what I've seen here," Steel says, "it probably already has, even before it became a revenant."
Solbird rolls back onto her hands and flings herself to her feet. Steel groans as he pushes himself back to his feet. "This is way above our level." Steel says. "I just wanted to get some experience to level up... I mean, this isn't a challenge-"
"More like an execution." Solbird says. They both turn to look at the revenant. It pulls the spear out of it's body.
[-10 Health Points]
[-10 Health Points]
[-10 Health Points]
Steel looks down at his spear next to the revenant's feet. "An execution isn't exactly what I was thinking... but it fits."
The revenant drops Solbird's spear on the floor. It shifts it's gaze to the pair.
"Jeez." Solbird says. "It doesn't look mad or anything."
"Looks kind of dead, doesn't it?" Steel says, glancing at it's face.
"Emotionless, expressionless. Yeah, like it's dead."
The revenant stretches it's mouth wide. Green and purple mist billows out.
"Well that's not good." Steel says, glancing back down at his spear.
"Scan!" Solbird calls out. Her goggles trace a wild outline like morphing clouds around the mist. The red loading bar appears and fills in a matter of moments.
"Toxic Miasma." Solbird announces. "If it doesn't kill us quickly, it'll keep killing us until we're dead."
"How did the government scouts make such a bad mistake?" Steel asks. Solbird waves her hand towards the revenant.
"Perhaps it has something to do with this monster looking like it could be one of them?"
"But doesn't that give them more of a reason not to mess it up?"
"Look, we've got to get our spears back."
"What are we supposed to do, jump in holding our breath?"
"Maybe, but whatever we do we have to do it soon!"
The two each pull a deep breath into their lungs and charge forward. The revenant throws it's arms out. The man pushes off the ground and dives forward past the revenant, sliding on the carpet.
Solbird drops into a shorter roll, landing on the opposite side of the revenant than Steel. Having positioned themselves next to their spears, they each grab one. They turn to face the revenant while rising to their feet. They both jam their spears into the revenant's skull.
[-50 Health Points] [critical!]
[-50 Health Points] [critical!]
[//////////////////////////////////////////REVENANT/////////////////////////////////////////////]
The health bar, now completely blackened except for the name of the enemy, shrinks from each end inward on itself until it collapses and blinks away.
____________________________
| ENEMY DEFEATED |
| REVENANT INCAPACITATED |
| BARRIERS CLEARED |
|500 EXPERIENCE POINTS GAINED|
____________________________
The spears each pass through the skull and stop directly in front of each other's faces, the points of Solbird's spear slightly poking Steel's cheek. The revenant makes no sound. It goes limp. The miasma stops pouring out of it's mouth. The two release their spears, letting the revenant fall, and charge out of the miasma.
They reach clean air and drop their hands to their knees, hunched over and gasping. The woman notices she still has the knife in her forearm.
"The adrenaline... must have... made me... tune it out..." She says, holding her arm up for Steel to see. Steel makes a wincing face, eyes narrowing, and looks away.
"Be... more... careful..." He says.
Solbird straightens up and puts a hand on the knife's hilt. "Ah! Agh...!" She cries out softly, dragging the knife out of her forearm. Blood quickly wells up on both sides of her arm. It drips, runs, to the ground.
[-20 Health points]
Steel swings his backpack off and rummages around. "A ha!" he says, pulling out and holding up a roll of bandages. Steel holds the bandages out towards Solbird, who takes them from him.
"Don't I need to sanitize this first?" She asks. Steel nods.
"Yeah. But I didn't bring any sanitizer. I figured something could happen... I just didn't predict that this kind of thing would happen. It should be fine as long as we get you to a clinic or hospital before long. There's some on the way back, not out of the way at all."
Solbird unravels the bandages, letting them drop to the floor like a scroll. She wraps herself as the blood tries to swim through the bandage layers. After enough layers, the blood stops showing through. She tears the bandage and closes it with one of the metal clips from the roll. She rolls the remainder up and throws it back to Steel, who catches it and stows it back in his backpack.
[+30 Health Points]
"Before we talk about anything else, we should collect as much loot as we can from the miasma." Solbird says, looking her wrapped arm over. She looks bitter, somewhat scowling but somewhat attentive.
"You mean... go back into... that?" Steel asks, turning to look at the block of miasma hanging in the air. "Well, there is probably good loot... and we did manage to avoid inhaling any before..."
"I didn't take a knife through the arm for nothing. Maybe I should have you collect it all?" She asks. Steel scoffs.
"Hey, I got my head smashed, literally, through a wall. That wasn't exactly easy. Or fun. Or relaxing. Sorry about the knife though."
"So it's agreed." Solbird smiles. "We'll both go in and get as much as we can. We'll come back out and drop it, then go back in and get more if we have too."
Steel scratches the back of his head. "It's just... the thing is... that's a really, really powerful miasma according to the scan's results. I mean, toxic miasma is bad news."
"You obviously know nothing about toxic miasma." Solbird says. "A poison like that won't kill us immediately. It definitely won't kill us even in an hour, unless we do something stupid like fight a super tanky undead monster for minutes at a time while breathing it in."
"So it should have released the gas at the start of the fight?"
"That probably would have screwed us... but it also left it pretty vulnerable, so maybe there is a reason it didn't start the fight with that."
"But if it did... we could be in really bad shape right now..."
Solbird shakes her head. "So, were we not supposed to die? That's what you're making me think right now. And I don't like it. Whatever, let's just collect our loot and figure out what to do next."
Steel sighs. "Fine. I'll go into the deadly murder smoke and help collect loot."
Solbird takes a deep breath. She turns and jogs into the miasma. Steel takes a long glance at the miasma; purple, green and still swirling around itself. He shakes his head, takes a deep breath, and follows her in.
As Solbird approaches the revenant, it's body shines a purple light. It's corpse bursts into purple particles. Just as with the skeletons, the particles expand outward as they dim away and disappear. Items are left behind in its place.
Solbird squats down and scoops up as much as she can. She stands up as Steel gets to her and squats down next to her. He scoops up as much as he can and jogs out after her. Steel exits the miasma to the sounds of Solbird vacuuming air into her lungs. Steel gasps in a huge breath of his own and stumbles to Solbird. He drops his loot into the pile with hers. They both gasp, keeled over the loot pile, next to each other.
"We... didn't... get... everything..." Steel attempts to communicate to Solbird. She nods.
"I figured... Which means we... we'll have to... again..."
They straighten up, having gotten some more breath in them, and Solbird squats down closer to the pile.
"We both managed to get our spears, interesting." She reaches a hand out and starts rummaging through the pile. "Cotton, some other fabric... Oh! A rare crafting material!" She grabs a slab of metal and holds it up in the air. "You think we could strengthen our spears with this?"
Steel takes the slab of metal from her and looks it over. "Scan." He says. The goggles trace the metal. "This does look similar to what they use to forge the aloy for fighting corruption monsters with. It's a shame they can't make bullets out of any of the effective aloys. We can only use guns on each other." The scan finishes. A window appears detailing the metal. "It's a Shadowbar. If we were to use this to enhance our spears, which we could and it would increase the damage, it would unfortunately also give our spears the element of darkness." He stashes the bar in his backpack.
"Aww..." Solbird says, putting some of the loot away in her backpack. "It's too bad so many corruption monsters are of the darkness element, then. There are some others here and there such as fire monsters. Fire monsters make for great Corruption Zone monsters because of how similarly fire spreads when compared to corruption. Things associated with fire like: desire, ambition, motivation and anger are concepts that can often lead to corruption and evil when unchecked.
Solbird stands up with her spear. She walks to the wall and leans the spear against it. "Of course, you also see many other types of monsters, of all elemental types, in the Zones... but darkness and fire are the main two. Surprisingly," Solbird walks back to Steel, who was putting the rest of the loot into his backpack, "light is also a more common element to find in Zones of Corruption. Isn't that weird?"
Steel stands up, backpack slung around his back. "Yeah." he says, turning to the miasma. "Ugh, we still have some more to collect."