[Player Log Start!]
[Log Holder: Benedict Carrey]
[Level: 1 – Boss Stage]
Ben rushed into the disaster zone Hygeia had become.
There seemed to be a problem in every direction that needed to be dealt with. Things that needed saving. People that needed to be helped. Where should she go first? What fire needed the most immediate attention?
Medical sector, she decided. That was where Tench would be. Now she could ask why he lied, because she still didn’t understand why that had happened. She had been so sure that they had built up trust between them, and yet Tench had broken it so easily. It just wasn’t right.
The medical sector wasn’t looking very good. Most of the tents were torn open, and the sick lying in beds gaping up at nothing were all undead. The blood splattered on the dirt was both green and cherry red. She made sure to avoid it all in equal measure and continue her search.
Sure enough, as she had expected, Tench was there, sequestered in the most secure clinic, which was also the only cement building in the sector. She might have missed him altogether, if he hadn’t been standing on the roof, working on some kind of contraption. Stupid, that. Didn’t he know he could be spotted?
She pulled out a grappling hook that Lucky had given her to help scaling sheer cliff faces. Ben made quick work of the wall, pulling herself onto the roof to look at Tench and his project. He wasn’t alone. Terry and Jared were standing there too, looking uncertain of how to handle the taken apart mechanics of a… was that a leaf blower?
“Hey, Ben.” He greeted, not sounding the least bit bothered, “How did it go?”
“I finished it.” She replied, “But what about you? Why did you lie to me?”
He looked up, confused, “What? I didn’t lie about anything. It’s going fine!” There was so much certainty in his voice that made Ben almost believe him for a moment. But that wasn’t true. She’d seen the message herself. And Hygeia was in shambles, even as he said to her face that it was going fine.
“The Boss Battle has started!” She told him, “And no one told me. Only Verity told me the truth.” Speaking of… her eyes whipped nervously around the roof. There was no gun-toting girl skulking in the corner. Neither Asadullah nor Michael were present, too.
“Where are they?” She asked, her voice splintering, “Where are the rest of us?”
Jared’s eyes darkened, making her heart beat even more erratically, “They’re doing the Boss Battle.” He explained, “We had to retreat and work on a zombie killing device while they finished.”
“Zombie killer?” Ben asked, confused, “What about the cure? Didn’t it show promising results?”
Terry nodded sharply, “The test trial actually worked! We lost… more than a few people waiting for that trial to work, but at least it proved to us that we had a reliable cure. But this only works for recently bitten folks. We need to deal with… those, too.” He gestured to the roaming bands of zombies below them. She hadn’t noticed before, but there was a structure to how they were moving. Clean lines and tracks set up for them to follow.
That… wasn’t normal. The rules had changed. And she didn’t know how exactly.
“There’s a King Zombie.” Tench explained, looking very tired, “You remember Derek? He leveled up so much he became the King of all zombies, everywhere.” Goddammit, Terry, Ben pinched the bridge of her nose. To his credit, the boy looked suitably chastised. Best not to bring it up, then.
“What do we do now?” She asked, “Why the leaf blower? Why aren’t we helping them?”
“The ‘leaf blower’ is meant to throw powdered antibiotics onto the zombies.” Terry explained, “So that we can destroy all the beasts once they fall out of formation when the Zombie King dies.”
“Great. Alright.” Ben agreed, “Wait, they die with antibiotics?”
“Yeah, keep up.”
“You guys… do that.” Ben decided, “I’m heading after them.”
“What’re you going to do?” Jared asked, “Swing your bat at them?”
“Yes. Fat lot better than the help you’re giving right now.” Ben replied. Jared winced, almost imperceptibly, and she turned to rectify that, “Not that I expect you to do anything in a situation that you clearly aren’t suited for. I’ll handle this, you just need to tell me where they are, now.”
Pensive silence, and then Terry raised a hand, pointing with a finger that shook ever so slightly, into the part of Hygeia where the zombies were thickest. She should have expected that. She nodded shortly, already making her way down a fire escape which turned out to be in the corner.
“Good luck, you guys!” She added, remembering to bid them farewell halfway down. She dove into the nightmare that her world had turned into. For once, she found herself not dwelling on each zombie she killed. It just came naturally. Her brother didn’t haunt her, instead it was the figures of Michael, Asadullah, and Verity that dogged her. She couldn’t live with herself if they died.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
Pragmatically, she understood that they were stronger than her in every scale that mattered. Did that stop her from running as hard as she could? No, it did not. She put her all into running even faster, because this would be exactly the time when they got overconfident in their abilities.
She had only just breached the ring of zombies which created the border of the fighting ground when she finally got a good look at what she had stumbled onto.
Michael had managed to get onto the roof of the only building nearby, and was shooting his green fireballs from there, while Asadullah and Verity were in the thick of things, desperately trying to avoid the jaws of a few interloping zombies, which seemed to have been let in deliberately by… Derek. The King Zombie. It was just as startling to see it even if she had believed them.
While Asadullah was distracted taking care of the zombies which had considered his much bigger body to be the main threat, Verity took advantage of the situation, pulling out from her coat of infinite weapons a small, metal projectile of some sort. One flick of a thumb, and then she threw it.
It took Ben embarrassingly long to connect the dots. It was a grenade.
Where did she get a grenade?
And then the realization struck her that it didn’t matter because she needed to get cover before the thing exploded on the ground. Except it didn’t. Green fire arced through the air, hitting it dead on. It couldn’t have been planned. Or, if it was, it was very stupidly planned. Ben rushed forward, Asadullah already shrinking down to avoid the brunt of the blast. Verity had no such defenses, though. Ben rushed forward to her prone form, still frozen on the spot, and managed to put herself between the girl and the blast, wincing as a shockwave of fire and agony collided against her back, leaving a sizzling memory.
Ash and charcoal was going everywhere, making her eyes sting even after such prolonged contact with it in the Tracklands. She coughed, and she wouldn’t be surprised if smoke came right back out with the way her tongue felt bitter and oily.
Verity squinted up at her, looking utterly lost. Ben smiled as best as she could manage, figuring it was her responsibility to explain things to her, “I came back a few hours ago.” She explained, “Booked it as fast as I could. Sorry if I’m late to the party.”
Verity nodded, sharp and dismissive, “’Kay. I gotta go now.” Was all she said before she was back on her feet, blazing towards the King Zombie, which seemed to be… dead.
That was a nice way of putting it, instead of just mulch. Because that was what the zombie previously known as Derek now looked like. A pile of ground-up meat, stained green from disease and rot, sending up a foul smell into the air around them. Ben didn’t understand her interest in it. It was clearly dead.
But if it was dead, why were the zombies still locked in their orbits? Shouldn’t they have broken free and descended on them by now? Yet, they moved, as if ignorant to their leader’s demise.
Or maybe it was Ben who was ignorant, because when she had her back turned to keep an eye on the rotters surrounding them, a sound unlike any other pierced her ears. A sound that she heard from her sessions being Healed, or watching other people be Healed by Tench. The sound of flesh stitching together, accompanied by something more foreign, but nonetheless visceral. A scream of barely conscious agony.
Ben whipped around to look at what had once been Derek, only to see that the pile of mulch had joined up with more zombies, fusing into something larger. Even more menacing than the first. She bared her teeth and activated Melee, even as the world swam around her. The shockwave had dealt intense damage. She felt like she was going to collapse any second. But she was ready to power through it.
And then some sort of powder was falling from the sky. She looked at it, taken by surprise. The powder rested on her eyelashes, making it hard to see, but otherwise not inconveniencing her. The zombies, however, had a much more visceral reaction.
They began screaming, melting, falling to the ground with glitchy panels. It was utter destruction.
She looked to the part of the swamped area where this killing powder was coming from, where the zombies had already fallen and begun writhing on the floor, and trampling over them and through them, was Tench, holding the leaf blower turned agent of death, flanked by the last two members of their party.
The King Zombie wailed, guttural and inhuman, charging the other zombies into action. And once more, it was bedlam.
[Applying Melee…]
She didn’t waste time on the small fry. No mercy was spared for them. She killed, and then moved on just as swiftly. Everyone else seemed to be of the same mind, lashing out against the zombies in quick strikes, interspersed with hits directed at the source of the problem.
There was a Health Bar above it, putting the beast on 500/500 Health Points for its second form. How fast could they whittle it down to zero?
Michael threw another torrent of fireballs, and this time everyone made sure to steer clear. Terry swung in right after, Man-eating Mold stretching further than a human hand would, and eating right through the face of his creation. Jared hounded after him, making sure to land killing hits through the soft eye sockets of the monsters which tried to drag them down.
[-50 HP in Damage!]
[-30 HP in Damage!]
The King Zombie screeched, throwing out flecks of stomach acid that ate through the fabric and skin of anyone in range. Which was almost all of their party.
Asadullah snuck in close with the form of a small, quick-moving cat, and then expanded into a giant tiger, ripping the withered head that was the only identifiable part of the main body out and sending it flying to the ground.
[-100 HP in Damage!]
While Ben and Verity got down to dismembering the rest of the zombie amalgamation, the head smacked wetly against the pavement as it landed in front of Tench.
It wasn’t dead yet, eyes gazing sightlessly in front of it. Tench raised the mouth of leaf blower, and pressed the trigger for full power, fumigating it completely before stomping onto it for good measure. The damage points for that racked up like crazy. The Health Bar slid down and down and down, until…
[King Zombie Killed!]
[You Have Killed the Boss!]
[Party(Main) Has Gained 4,000 Exp Each!]
They all exchanged delighted looks of relief.
It quickly turned to alarm as they remembered the zombies around them, which were now free of the King Zombie’s control.
Ben didn’t even get to shout out a warning before the tidal wave of rotten flesh and desperate champing mouths was upon them.
[Player Log End!]