I stared at the fork, then at the last spot the Shadow meguca had been in. I checked the area a hundred times, with senses so fine I could spot individual grains of sand from a dozen meters off. I could smell the bugs hidden underneath the shadows of the boulder, I could hear faint gunshots beyond the horizon. And still I could not pick a single trace of the Shadow. As if she’d never been there to begin with.
If not for the fork, I might have construed it as some weird hallucination.
A fork that had been engraved with fancy swirls, made of something that at least looked like silver, and with three prongs broken off. It was a piece of cutlery that’d been worn out, whatever symbol or distinguishing feature rubbed off from constant use.
The only other clue lingering in the tiny object was the faint scent of apple.
Where had the meguca gone? Was she still around or had she truly just… vanished somewhere else? Had she tracked me down here or had she been stalking me all this time? If the quest had been to survive for a week then didn’t that mean she should’ve attacked me by now? A million very concerning questions, and nothing to answer them save this one broken fork.
My first instinct was to turn back, return, abort this and head to the city. Maybe begin using an inordinate amount of time looking into this one fork and where it might come from. But then again… did this change anything? We’d seen each other, I’d somehow stumbled on to the fact that I had a way to sense her presence (at least sense it under certain circumstances?) and she’d been shocked, running away.
The quest was still there. Seven days, of which four had been consumed.
I’d also expended 40 AP, leaving me at a concerning 33. If I added in how much I’d spent buying the shroom-juice, then turning back now would be a hard net loss in every aspect. I couldn’t afford that.
That did not mean, however, that I would just proceed as originally planned.
Very carefully, fishing through the backpack with my now over-sized hands, I pulled out my pants and wrapped them up around my forearm. On top of them, I strapped the holster for my Bulstra, gun included, then tucked into the holster the fork. This way, hopefully, it would be harder to lose either (and if the Shadow came back less likely she’d steal them without my noticing). Then added the tiny digital alarm-clock I’d gotten to keep track of time.
Content on my improvised “gear”, I dug out a hole and buried the rest of my stuff there.
Velocity Mode (2): * -2 AP / Second *
* -1 Senses / Second *
* +5 Speed / Second *
Time to hit the metaphorical road and find myself some monsters!
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It took a while to get used to my new senses, and a bit more to a degree that would allow me to run without missing crucial details (such as whether my foot would catch on a rock or not). And as embarrassing as tripping on four rocks in a row was, it wasn’t as embarrassing as figuring out I’d accidentally been avoiding the monsters. Not because of any actual desire to do so, but because the closer I got, the more uncomfortable I became.
Because that was what the monsters were to my heightened senses: uncomfortable.
The sensation went beyond merely what my senses could pick up. A feeling in the back of my head of wrongness that became more intense the closer I got. They were that rotten egg tucked away behind a counter, that squeaky wheel, and that itchy spot all rolled into one. A spot of sourness and wrongness in the world that pervaded in every direction.
It was like nothing else I’d experienced before, and it didn’t make a lick of sense. At least not until I laid eyes on the first monster of the day.
The creature was asleep, a snake made of boiling orange pustules and writhing blackened flesh. The creature barely moved, curled in on itself. Its body was surrounded by air that shimmered between gray and purple, as if a cloud made of light. Yet it was the cracked screaming maw in reality that startled me.
There was something at the center of the monster, a series of purple glass-like fragments haphazardly cobbled together into a grinding, screeching thing. It shifted, twisted, and shook violently, rending reality around it and leaving behind nothing but pain.
I understood, then, that I was looking at the monster’s core.
F-Class, Rust-Type. Codename: Copperhead.
There was a storm of emotions within me as I looked upon a broken thing that sought to rend the world around it. A flare of anger surged from inside of me at the sight of it, a spark that came out as a growl, body moving in a burst of speed and power. The monster raised its head, orange steaming eyes staring straight at me as it appeared to process what was happening.
Despite me running at a speed that made the ground blur beneath me, the monster managed to react on time. Its coils tightened into a spiral, and the monster opened its maw, letting out a shrill scream, a moment later, the pustules exploded, the shimmering air around it thickened with distortions and splattering of orange goo.
Thrusting my claw through the distortion, ignoring the hissing pain crawling up my arm, I lunged through the cloud. The snake screamed a second time, striking my hand and sinking its fangs within. Fire poured through and into my flesh, but I’d gotten what I wanted, grasping its skull with my other hand and yanking out, a singular brutal swing crushing the monster against the rock.
The pain vanished the instant it had died.
Copperheads were a simple threat, if a nasty surprise. The monsters presented a massive threat against vehicles, as its acid-like poison would turn just about every metal into rust-powder in seconds. Against flesh and blood it was less effective than even normal acid, but no less lethal given time.
Fortunately, once the monster died, the poison would go away alongside it. Though that did not mean the wounds would also just up and vanish.
F-class monster “Copperhead” defeated!
+3 AP Pick your Reward!
+5 AP / ‘Corrosion’
Gritting my teeth, the pain was quick to recede, the 3 AP from the kill allowing my stalled-out adaptation-mode giving me a full second’s worth of growth. With just that bit of self-healing, the burns on my hands had dried up, the cuts from the monster’s bite no longer bleeding, the sting worn off.
But my attention was beyond the prompt, on the tiny screaming ball of shattered wrongness floating right past it.
The core.
I blinked, slightly surprised, staring at it for a moment, then at the prompt, then back up at the core. It was vibrating violently, as if barely holding on to its ability to exist. There was the irrefutable sense that I couldn’t wait indefinitely for my choice.
I picked ‘corrosion’.
The core let out a soundless screech and shattered, the pieces surging towards me, turning into motes of light before vanishing altogether. The moment of confusion was followed by this feeling of heat washing over me, the fur and scales on my skin shifting and bloating into…
Zits.
Lots and lots of thimble-sized pustulent orange zits over every inch of my body.
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Ew.
Rubbing my large claws against my unprotected forearm caused tiny clouds of orange dust to burst out. My nose wrinkled at the scent, some horribly sweet putrefaction, as if someone had left cola to rot in an open container for a week. Worse, the zit closed up after a second or so, and after another handful of seconds, bloated back up, ready to burst again.
Double ew.
I shuddered, trying to will the skill away and getting a humorous but confused shrug out of the system. It was as if it was entirely unsure as to why I’d not want the perk in the first place, and I couldn’t help but sigh.
Still, I hadn’t fully recovered from that nasty bite, and I needed a lot more AP.
Raising my snout into the wind, I took several long sniffs, and quickly found another potential target. This time I began in a light jog, one that could’ve outrun any augmented human. The world did not blur around me, every spec and every detail crisp to my hyper-senses, so I pushed a bit harder, a bit faster.
Bit by bit I accelerated, until my 90 points in speed were being put to their full use. Dry soil crunched and cracked, but no matter how fast I ran, the world did not blur around me, not until I’d pushed my focus entirely ahead. My body’s movements felt more natural as I ran, more precise, fluid.
Following the scents in the air, I made my way towards a pack of mouthers. There were at least thirty of them, probably closer to fifty. The G-class were no less horrible to look at out in the wilderness than back in the city, scurrying around with bodies that were mostly one giant maw with legs.
There wasn’t much time to ponder on how much of a threat they posed, one of them had spotted me, opening its mouth that had far too many razor-sharp teeth and let out a shrill scream of alarm.
Taking a split second to confirm my surroundings in case there were other monsters, I launched straight towards the center of the pack while it was still spread out. The mouthers presented no resistance to my claws, each swipe I took turning the little abominations into splatters of sizzling ooze.
My confidence lasted all of three seconds before pain exploded out of my back. I spun violently, arms lashing out to buy me the space I needed. I immediately bolted out of the pack before I could be surrounded.
G-class monster “Mouther” defeated!
+3 AP
The AP from the kills pushed the scratches to close up, but I was more preoccupied with keeping a distance from the pack that was now in hot pursuit. Looking back, I noticed a faint trail of orange powder floating in my wake. One of the monsters’ face had broken out in blisters, sizzling blood pouring out through tiny chemical burns.
Huh. So the pimples were useful… just barely so.
Once velocity mode had guzzled up the AP, I turned back towards the pack, rushing towards its edge rather than straight to the center. I’d been caught off guard that first time, but I was certain now that I could deal with them. I just had to be careful not to get completely surrounded.
I splattered two mouthers before continuing beyond their reach, turning around and bolting back in. The monsters desperately shoved and pushed against one another in their attempt to get a bite out of me, and I’d take my swipes freely. Every blow resulted in one of their numbers splattering over the horde of gaping maws.
Hit and run.
It was one of the basics of vehicle combat against monster hordes. Whittle down their numbers bit by bit.
That is, until one of them got lucky. Razor sharp fangs closed around my calf and sank deep. I roared in pain, managing to kick the monster and tear it to shreds, but the damage was done, my next step became a stumble. With one leg barely responding, I began failing and swiping at the deluge of ankle-biters trying to jump at my face.
There were just too many of them. Every swipe I took tore through one if not two of them, but for every mouther going for my throat, there were three trying to attack my legs.
Achievement: Reach +200 Adaptative Speed
Unlocked: Twitch Muscles
Reaction time is halved. Adaptive Speed at 200! Cap reached!
Suddenly, it was as if all my senses had suddenly clicked together. The sounds all around me had shifted from a cacophony of too many things all at once into a more comprehensive image.
As I spun to splatter a monster that’d been aiming to bite out a piece of my lower back, I suddenly realized I was being far better able to keep my balance. A thick scaly tail was there where there had not been any before, but I had no time to take it in, spinning on my good leg to face the next three mouthers.
Though my healing had stopped, my fighting had shifted, flowing from one target to the next while kicking or swinging my tail at anything that tried to get me from behind. The fighting stretched on for too long, scratches and cuts mounting up even as the pack diminished in size.
Until, eventually, all that was left was myself surrounded by the evaporating bodies of… far too many mouthers. I screamed in triumph, roaring out with a bubbling sense of satisfaction that superseded all pain.
Breathing in the arid, hot air, blood covering my fur and scales, I glanced over at my AP. It had climbed all the way to the mid-forties.
Looking down at myself, I grimaced. The consideration of whether or not to keep saving up on AP was put aside. I needed that healing factor again. My plan was to hunt for as long as I could before my ride back showed up, and my endurance stat was currently within the strength category (even though the classification was weird!). That, and I’d rather not be walking around with open wounds.
Besides, investing into my stats would only help make hunting and fighting monsters easier! The system cheered on with a notification chirp of their own.
Charisma: 9 -> +9.5
I looked at the pop-up for a moment, blinking in confusion.
Upgrade available at Charisma 10!
The next pop-up promised, and I realized the system had intentionally stalled out said upgrade. I could only fathom it was because I might end up having another one of those hallucinations, and neither of us wanted that.
Giving the system a firm nod of appreciation, I focused.
Power Mode (3): * -3 AP / Second *
* -1 Speed / Second *
* +5 Strength / Second *
Purchasing shimmer for 10 AP before power-mode gobbled up everything I’d saved up (can’t be too careful), I sniffed at the wind, catching a whiff of more monsters not too far off. I caught my breath and set off.
Time to hunt!
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Several kilometers overhead of Axel’s location and several hours past noon, a constellation of high-altitude drones received an information request. The drones were massive in size yet incredibly light, hollow structures with wide solar-panel covered wings allowing them to use updrafts to remain suspended midair with barely any energy consumption.
As one, their high-end optics swept across the landscape, relaying the information back to the information hub before returning to stand-by mode.
Back in New Francisco, a CYPHER sub-strata #9 AI ran the information picked up from the sensors through a plethora of algorithms. It brought up tallies, density population, and threat assessment maps. Then, it did the same with the available anti-monster forces within its purview.
This information in turn was sent to a regional CYPHER sub-strata #8 Economical-impact node. It processed the data off of dozens of #9 nodes and used it to reassess what information would prove more valuable. Within a fourth of a millisecond, the reward for killing and recording the destruction of certain monsters was bumped up or dragged down by fractions of a credit.
Half a second later, it received a notification from regional correction management CYPHER sub-strata #7. It had detected that several of its predictions had been off by several degrees beyond acceptable tolerances. The data from the sub-strata #9 node had been double-checked, and it showed the number of monsters had increased beyond their initial estimations over the past few days. Not an unexpected event in itself, monster migration patterns could shift with no apparent reason, but any statistically relevant deviations were to be verified.
At Sub-strata #7’s instruction, #8 modified the value of killing any monster in that sector, increasing the reward by five extra credits each. The notification was sent out, pushed into the thousands of apps keeping track of changes in reward values and spreading it through every network.
Out in the field, the shift in value was noticed. Every gang in the rubber wall kept an eye out for such “bounties”, as they would be a great way to earn a bonus. Each gang ran the same calculation: would it be worth it to break formations and head out to this sector, or to merely wait until the monsters reached the rubber wall?
Communications blitzed, AI assistants engaging in fierce negotiations, thousands of messages a second. Numbers were crunched, possible revenue and profits estimated and contrasted to possible costs. Within barely a minute, an answer was reached: the only way to make it worth their time would be if just one gang headed out, and even then, it would not be that profitable compared to where they were already operating.
In the end, most of the gangs merely put out ammunition purchase requests in preparation of the surge in monsters that would surely be reaching the rubber-wall by the end of the day.
Or so they’d thought.