Chapter 14 - Beginning of a new life 3

It was night time in the lair, with moonlight seeping through the many openings in the massive cave. The lair was eerily bright, with the pale moonlight bouncing off the ghastly white walls and all the broken weapons and the pile of bones littered around in the cave. The otherwise eerily atmosphere of the lair was broken by the constant whirring of the two printers working incessantly, printing out thousands of ammunition to prepare for the final escape that was to ensue in a few hours. The mech stood under one of those openings, glowing brightly in the moonlight, and was surrounded by dozens of missiles and long belts of ammuntion, neatly laid out on the ground around the mech. The upper hull of the mech was wide open, with the core exposed, and the alien heart had bundles of powercables jutting out, that was connected to the two printers. The androids were busy working around the mech, working the printers to assemble and load the ammuntion belt, and arming the the mech with as much ammunition/munitions as possible, including the empty space that the pilot's seats used to be, now converted for that purpose.

The large onboard drum magazine in the mech's backpack whirred to life, and the thousands of linked 20mm rounds neatly laid out on the ground began to be rapidly fed into the mech, while the androids carefully armed the missiles launchers on the shoulder of the mech and fill the various exterior containers on the mech with magitech explosives like elemental grenades, mines and explosive satchels. Large claymore mines were attached to all four sides of mech to be used as a final resort when it got surrounded, and disposable missile pods were added to the legs and pauldrons to provide extra fire power. 

After the mech was completey loaded up, the androids began to equip themselves with their specified weapons. The fire team leader armed itself with a scoped version of the new 6.5mm rifle disguised as a magical musket, and the grenadier armed itself with the same rifle without a scope, along with a compact recoiless rifle (think of the carl gustav M4 irl) that looked like an exquisitely crafted brass cannon. The automatic rifleman went with the 8.6mm (.338cal) medium machine gun, and the rifleman was equipped with a combat shield and the pseudo musket with an underbarrel grenade launcher (I loosely followed the modern Swedish army's fire team loadout, since it included a dedicated AT weapon per fire team). Along with its ranged weapons, all four of the androids were equipped with the miniaturized version of the mech's powered combat knife, and each android carried enough explosives to blow anything he had encountered to dust. All of Hunter's truckload of monster cores were now completely gone, with the majority of them used to make the explosives, but Hunter was okay with losing the additional source of power, since he was now confident that he had enough explosives to blow this entire valley up. Earlier during the day, Hunter lobbed a couple of those magitech missiles and grenades that contained the monster cores at a large group of monsters to test them out, and the resulting carnage surprised him, with the magitech explosives rivaling powerful spells he had witnessed.

It was midnight, with plenty of time remaining until daylight, and with all of the equipment ready, it was finally time to leave. The disassembled industrial printer was safely tucked away into the armored compartment in the mech's backpack, and the small printer, due to its significance to his survival, was carried by Hunter. The remaining loot was equally distributed among the androids, and overall, the group looked the part of a ragtag group of scifi post apocalypse travelling merchants. Before he left the lair for good, Hunter used the mech's flamer to burn all the remaining things in the lair along with the completely gutted out chimera's corpse, and stomped and destroyed everything in the cave to make it look like a large group of monsters went through the lair. Anybody with half a brain would be able to tell it was not done by the monsters, but the sabotage met his goal of preventing people from pinpointing who did it, and destroy any evidence remaining that somebody survived. 

Hunter felt horrible for disrupting the ruins of the dead, but now was not the time for feeling guilt about the dead people. Shaking the sliver of guilt away, Hunter began to work himself up to leave the safety of the lair, while he nervously waited for the drones to find a brief opening they needed. The forest path leading to the exit was pitch dark, even under the bright moonlight, and it was now or never for Hunter to fight his way out of here. Fortunately, he did not have to wait for very long; the drones spotted a brief opening in the stream of monsters that contained only fewer monsters, with some fair distance between the tail end of the front wave and the start of the following wave.

He left the lair and inched as close as he could without alerting the monsters, and just before Hunter activating his night vision, launched the large missiles he set up in the lair. After screaming up the nightsky, leaving behind an invisible streak, the missiles exploded in midair and rained down the Chimera's flamable liquid on the unsuspecting monsters, creating two massive walls of fire that isolated the area from the main body of the monster waves for a brief amount of time. The launchers, done with its job, exploded, and using that as a signal, Glados fully activated the mech's hoverplates and boosters. With its mana shield fully up, the mech charged into opening at full speed while Hunter was hanging onto a foothold on the back of the mech, while the androids kept up with the mech, runnning at inhumanely fast speeds. They were able to blast across most of the way before the surprised monsters even realized what was going on, and when they were near the entrance of the small trail, Hunter jumped off the mech and started his mad rush up the path, together with the androids, while Glados stopped and opened fire at the incoming wave of monsters.

The dark forest was lit up with the bright tracers from the 20mm blaring away, and the surprised swarm was met by a barrage of shells, that melted through their shields and thick carpaces/hides like hot knife through butter; some rounds even going through multiple monsters, exploding torsoes and mincing limbs apart. However, even under the heavy barrage of autocannon fire, the inumerable monsters crept closer and closer to Glados in the darkness, and soon, some got close enough for Glados to resort to using the powered fist. The powerfist, that expended a small monster core canister every hit, made short work of the overly aggressive critters that got too close, as it blew the weaker monsters into bits, and disabled larger monsters by vaporizing their bones and internal organs.

Unfortunately, there were just too many monsters, and a few still managed to get past the powerful, but slow melee attacks, and the mech was quickly surrounded from all sides. Before any saw a chance to pounce, Glados triggered the claymores, peppering a large radius around the mech with thousands of metal balls, which obliterated most of the monsters around her metallic avatar. After a wide sweep with the flame thrower to finish off the majority of the weaker monsters crippled from the claymore blast, Glados released the first barrage of missiles into the dense pack, and rushed back towards Hunter and his fireteam, dropping mines and placing explosives along the way. The barrage of missiles contained the acids collected from the dead Chimera, and the numerous monsters struck with the missiles let out inhuman screams filled with terror and pain, not unlike the ones let out by the unfortunate summoned.The screams from the dying monsters were intense enough to convince the mindless monsters to briefly stop to avoid the pool of acid, and they could do nothing but roar angrilly behind the pool of acid and fire, screaming bloody murder. 

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By the time, all the screams ended in the distance, after the monsters finally succumbed to the acid, Glados silently emerged from the darkness, rejoining the group. The mech was unrecognisable, thickly covered in the blood and entrails of the monsters, with the power fist still dripping blood on to the ground. The grotesque view of the mech and the still lingering screams of the monsters in his mind made Hunter go slighly weak in the stomach, but in order to increase the distance from the monsters, Hunter quickly got on the back of the mech, and the group swiftly proceeded to travel up the path. In no time, they were sufficiently far from the valley, that the group of monsters on their tail were completely separated from the main monster wave, allowing the party to fight the persistant horde on their tail without fear of attracting the main wave. The monster horde on their tail was reported by the drone to be massive, with the initial missile barrage catching a large number of monster's attention, so after entering a suitable clearing able to be used as a chokepoint, the party stopped and prepared to face the final wave, so they could safely escape.

In the distance, even without the drone's footage, Hunter could make out the massive monster wave, as the enraged monsters kept triggering the explosives on the path, seemingly unaffected by their losses, and rapidly closing the distance. The strategically placed explosive traps took out more than half of the swarm of monsters, killing weaker monsters instantly, but a large number still managed to get through, and rushed into the first killzone that was rigged with most of the remaining explosives. After a large number of the monsters entered the clearing, Glados launched multiple missile volleys into the group, to soften the hard targets up, and dozens of large monsters were blasted apart by the precise missile strikes, the magitech missiles exploding on shields and sending jets of plasma into their body. Immediately after the missiles struck, the elemental explosives were set off, and the rest of the horde caught in the killzone was covered by a huge series of powerful magic attacks, and after the thunderous explosions were over, the remaining monsters finally emerged out of the smoke, enraged more than ever.

While the monsters were still blinded from the explosions, as soon as the thick dust/smoke cleared a little and the monsters were visible with their night vision equipment, the small group that were fortified in hidden dugouts opened fired with everything they had. The rifle wielders focused on the light/fast targets, while the mech with its heavy weapons and the anti tank weapon equipped grenadier focused on the heavier targets. Occasionally, along with firing charged plasma bolts that blasted groups of monsters apart, the mech threw large mech sized grenades that froze and blew up large groups, while the missiles with laser like pinpoint accuracy, struck large monsters in the thick swarm.

Before it died horrifically to multiple missile hits, one of the porcupine monsters launched its spines, and one of the spines narrowly missed Hunter's head, scraping the side of his helmet and leaving a deep gouge. Hunter, who was caught up in the excitement of battle, continued to madly fire his rifle, and did not even realize he was hit. The battle raged on, and the barrels of automatic weapons, even with the cooling runes, started to glow red hot from all the heat, and empty missile canisters and ammunition links started to form a small hill around Glados. After what seemed like an eternity, when Glados was down to using the MG and the combat knife after running out of everything else, and the androids also out of ammuntion and running around with the knife, the battle ended as quickly as it started when there was nothing left alive. The field suddenly went silent as the gunfire stopped, and besides the crackling sounds of burning bodies, the silence suddenly returned and enveloped the field like a dense fog. 

Hunter was jarred awake from his trance in the sudden silence, and he blinked slowly, while trying to process his surroundings. The short but brutal combat was absolutely devastating, with the small field littered with bodies, covered by a nauseating smell, of a mix of the sweet and oddly appetizing smell of burning flesh, the metallic smell of blood, and the smell of ozone from the elemental grenades. One of the spines from the porcupine had severly damaged one of the androids, with another android missing an arm following a deadly melee with a werewolf. The mech did not even have a scratch with its powerful shield generators doing its job, but was still covered in dried blood aside for the squeaky clean vision ports. 

Confirming that the area was finally clear of monsters through the drone reports, Hunter gave a long sigh of relief and lifted his hands to his helmet to take it off, and finally discovered the massive gouge on his helmet. A chill went down his spine, realizing the near death experience he was in, and Hunter realized just how lucky he was to alive, with all his near death experiences so far, including one that resulted in his actual death. With both the relief of being alive, and the relief from finally making it out of the valley rushing into him all at once, all the remaining tension escaped from Hunter's body, and he slumped down to the ground, lying on his back on the cool forest ground. But, he could not stop himself, and after raising his upper body up, did some cheesy fist pumps in the air, while yelling and crying with mixed emotions. Then, with his energy now completely spent, he was back on the ground murmuring whoohoos silently. 

According to the map he was not far from the first village that the path led to, and if he was lucky, he could get past the village and slip into civilization unnoticed by dawn, and find someplace to rest after selling some wares for money. After spending a some time until repair the androids, salvaging the monster cores, and a simple meal, Hunter was back on track. He was on foot this time, since he could meet people at any moment, so although it took longer than he wanted, it wasn't too long before he saw the crude wooden wall of the village in the distance that the drones have already scouted out. 

The village looked abandoned, with no light visible, and the wodden wall made with the same red wood in the forest was in various state of rot and were thickly covered in moss. Relieved that the place was abandoned as expected, Hunter lowered his guard, and approached the wall to look for an easy way in. However, before he was close enough to touch the damp wall, he cursed and immediately ducked to the ground when he saw something that was not right. When the passing wind moved the leaves on the ground, barely visible footprints could be seen going around the bottom of the walls with the thermal optic. Even though the drones could not find anything in the village from above, somebody have recently walked past this area and left those footprints, presumably patrolling around the walls. Hunter realized their mistake of being too reliant on the drones and the team silently retreated back to the treeline, until they were out of earshot from the village.

Cursing under his breath, Hunter decided to deploy some miniature stealth drones directly into the village to find what was going on. It was probably a group of people looking for the missing heroes? in the valley, but it was strange how stealthy they were acting, especially this far from the monster infested valley. When the miniature, insect sized drones entered the village, it looked just like the footage from above, with the village in various states of disrepair, until the bug sized drones suddenly passed through an invisible wall, giving Hunter a jump scare when the screen suddenly changed. What he saw further ruined his mood, and the day absolutely could not have gone any worse.