"FIRE!!! WE NEED FIRE!!!" Derek called to everyone around. "TJ! Go get those explosives! I'm not sure we have anyone that can dish out enough fire magic yet to make a difference!"
"On it!" TJ called back.
"Everyone else, lay down cover fire while we work on keeping it busy!" Derek continued.
The security guards all rushed to get behind the concrete barricades that had been put in place in front of the building and braced behind it to aim at the Troll Fiend.
"Fire as we move in!" Derek yelled. "Party members spread out, don't give it one big target to hit! Try to take it apart, but remember Trolls regenerate! We need time for TJ to get back!"
Tom summoned a creature to fight with them and an abyssal chicken appeared out of the portal.
"Well, maybe it can be a distraction," Tom said looking at the beast. "Go attack!" he told the chicken.
Taking off running, the chicken ran straight at the troll as if it had no fear, mouth open and screeching at it in fury. Suppression fire came from behind, firing at the troll. The bullets struck the monster and opened holes in its skin. Right after the bullets stuck the monster, its skin seemed to basically eat the bullets and close up behind it, regenerating almost immediately over the tiny holes.
Roaring in fury at the small amount of pain it was feeling, the troll took a step forward and then paused. Seeming to suddenly notice the chicken running at it, it smiled and reached down to grab it. Scooping it up in the ground it pulled it up to its face. For its part, the abyssal chicken fought and bit its fingers the entire way up, trying in vain to harm the troll. Up it went, tilting its head back until it dropped the chicken into its mouth and began chewing.
"Well...all we did was feed it," Jay said. "Everything really does love chicken."
"Let's get in there guys! We have to keep it away from the guild building!" Tom called.
Moving to intercept the troll, the team spread out to encircle the monster. As the troll took another step toward the center, Tom stepped in front of it and used his skill Fear. Looking down at Tom the monster moved its hand as though it was going to strike him, then paused. Its expression changed from one of anger to concern as it continued to stare at Tom.
"BOO!" Tom yelled up at it.
Flailing its arms slightly the monster took a single step back away from Tom.
"Boo? Really? Come on man this isn't a toddler!" Kiera yelled at Tom.
"Hey! It worked didn't it?" Tom called, not taking his eyes off the slightly fearful beast.
Kiera had set herself up behind the barricades as well and had pulled her rifle out and took aim. Firing a shot off the Troll's left eye exploded and it screamed as it reached up to grab it. Not wasting any more time, Tom cast Dark Weapon Flame, activated his Strength Tattoos, and moved forward to strike.
Slashing horizontally across the Troll's body, Tom's greatsword bit deep into its lower stomach. A smell of rotten putrescence mixed with burning flesh erupted from the slash that Tom caused. The Troll's intestines spilled out, some of which had been cut, and the fluids inside were spilling out. A lot of which were falling onto Tom, who was standing in the way.
Hearing some people throw up from behind him, Tom closed his eyes, trying not to see what was happening, and continued his swing around into another horizontal cut. The Troll had backed up though and he missed, slipping in the bile on the ground and he fell. Stepping forward, the Troll kicked Tom to get him further away from itself. Flying through the air, Tom landed about twenty yards away groaning and grasping his side.
Derek yelled at the beast right after it kicked Tom and ran past it bashing its knee with his mace. With a sickening crunch, the knee bent inward at a terrible angle, and the Troll went down to one knee. Unfortunately, even as it was going down, the knee was already beginning to pull itself back together. This did not stop it from letting out a roar of pain and trying to attack Derek as it fell though. Its swing went wild, however, as Derek continued to move past it.
"Eat lead motherfucker!" James yelled as he shot at the troll on its way down to a knee. The bullets did little to damage the monster and the holes were again immediately healed, but James was on a direct collision course with the beast on the opposite side from Derek. Placing his guns back in his storage and pulling out his hand axes, James leaped into the air and came down, bringing both axes down on the wrist of the Troll that was attached to the hand resting on the ground to stop itself from falling when it took a knee.
Chopping threw the wrist, the axes clanged against the ground behind the Troll's arm as the monster began to topple over after losing its anchor point. Roaring again, the beast landed on its face, unable to stop itself after swinging at Derek.
Taking full advantage of the downed opponent, Jay and Kevin rushed in. Jay silently, and Kevin yelling at the top of his lungs, invoking his rage. Leaping onto the beast's back, Jay drove both kamas into the sides of the Toll's neck and let it bleed. Kevin began hacking away at the Toll's side as like a housing development company through a rainforest. Soon the monster lay in two pieces on the ground from a combination of Tom's strike and Kevin's relentless attacks. The monster's arms began to slow down, then they stopped moving.
Jay pulled out his weapons and jumped off its back.
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"Not so tough. Regenerative somewhat, but nothing we couldn't handle." Jay said.
Suddenly, a finger twitched as the body pieces began to move closer together. Backing away in horror, the party stared as the beast began to knit itself back together. Everything came together except the cut Tom had made in the stomach. It began to stand and roared at the people around it.
"You've got to be fucking kidding me!" Jay yelled at it.
Walking up next to Jay, Tom looked at him still holding his side. "What did you expect? It's a Troll after all."
"I didn't expect it to regenerate from those kinds of wounds!" Jay yelled indignantly.
"Anything but fire. That's why we need the explosives." Tom said as he stepped up to the beast again.
This time he used his Corruption skill on the beast. Then as the creature swung at him, he danced backward and sliced at its wrist, severing it with his sword. Howling with rage and pain the Troll held its arm against its chest.
"It shouldn't be as powerful and the regeneration should be lessened now. We need to keep it busy!" Tom called.
The team once again moved into position and began to attack it from all sides, not letting it focus on any one person. Several of them were hit by arms or legs as they got too close, but again it was whittled down. Just as before, though, it regenerated from all the attacks, though slightly slower than before and not its left hand.
Tom cast eldritch blast at its face and it began to dance around trying to put the green flames out. They didn't last long as the spell was not very powerful, but again, its face did not heal from the burns.
"HERE!" TJ yelled from behind them as he ran up with a package in his hands.
"Grenades?" Tom asked.
"C4 actually. If you can get it onto its body, I have the trigger here." TJ motioned at the button in his hand.
"Where the fuck did you get C4?!" Tom cried
"The backroom of a gun store. I don't really think they were supposed to have it, but I figured...no rules anymore right?" TJ replied
Tom smiled a truly wicked grin. "Yeah, no rules. And I bet I can do better than just get it onto its body."
Summoning another demon, he was unfortunately met with a dretch. "That's not what I fucking need," Tom said and cast the summons again. This time an abyssal chicken popped out. "Perfect."
Tom took the C4 and held it up in front of the chicken.
"Now, I need you to take this in your mouth and go to the Troll. Let him grab you. We will do the rest." Tom said to the chicken.
It cocked its head to one side, then took the package in its mouth and began to run furiously at the Troll.
"Are you doing what I think you're doing?" Kiera called.
"Depends on what you think I'm doing," Tom replied, not looking back at her.
The chicken ran up and kicked the Troll in the shin. Looking down at it, slightly confused, it smiled when it noticed that it was another chicken. It reached down, picked it up, and held it over its mouth. Once again it dropped it into its mouth.
"NOW!" Tom yelled, and TJ pushed the trigger.
The head of the Troll exploded out in a rain of gore covering everyone nearby.
"Yuck! I got some in my mouth!" James called out from where he had been closer to the monster than the others.
Falling first to its knees, then flat out, the Troll's body lay lifeless on the ground, not regenerating.
"Alright everyone, nice job. Time to hit the showers." Tom called, wiping Troll brain out of his eyes.
Trudging inside, the guild members all went to hit the bathrooms and clean up from the fight. Tom and Derek spent some time at the entrance healing anyone that was hurt, but it was mostly minor injuries. Their numbers had prevented the Troll from being able to single out any one person and cause too much damage.
After getting cleaned up the party met in the main lobby.
"Here ya go Jay," Tom said tossing keys to him.
"What's this for?" Jay said confused.
"You wanted to take the Goblin Slayer 2.0 out for a spin didn't you?" Tom replied.
Jay's eyes lit up like a serial flasher finding a new park.
"Really?! Oh man, let's go!" Jay said, already running toward the parking garage.
Loading up in the vehicle just a short time later, the team took off to do some scouting around the area. Cackling with glee Jay drove out onto the main streets looking for goblins. It took them a few blocks of driving, but they finally found some. With true murderous joy, Jay slammed on the gas as he plowed those ugly fuckers down. One even got caught on the new cattleguard spikes and was dragged around for about a half mile before Tom had Jay stop so he could get out and pull it off.
Hopping back in, the team passed a mattress store.
"Hey, stop here Jay. I wanna go look in that store." Tom said.
"OK, but I get to drive back too," Jay said.
"Alright," Tom said chuckling.
Hopping out of the car, the team moved to the entrance and had to break the glass on the door to get inside.
"Looks like the apocalypse happened before this place opened. No one seems to have been here at all yet." Derek pointed out.
"Kinda weird not seeing all the fluorescent lights on these mattresses. I've never been in one of these stores after they closed." Kevin said.
"I had a thought, we have been bringing things back but not really using this storage system," Tom said. "I want to see what it can actually do."
Reaching out Tom touched one of the mattresses and thought about adding it to his inventory. He got a prompt in return.
This action cannot be performed:
This item is too large to fit into your storage space.
"Well, that's too bad. I was hoping we could bring some back for the people in the center." Tom said.
"What about memory foam mattresses?" Derek asked.
"Aren't those the same size?" Tom said.
"When they are open, sure. But they come in compressed in a much smaller box." Derek replied.
"Let's go check the back. They likely have a stockpile of them for selling." Tom said, getting excited.
Moving on to the back of the building to the warehouse area, the team found the shelves where they kept the mattresses.
"There must be a couple hundred of these different types of memory foam mattresses, let's see if this works," Tom said, reaching a hand out to touch one of the boxes.
Thinking about adding it to his inventory, the item disappeared and showed as an item in his inventory.
"HA! It worked! We need to get all of these in our inventories and take them back to the center." Tom told them.
For the next almost half an hour, the team began to take all the memory foam mattress boxes off the shelves and then add them to their inventories. Finding that each one of them could carry about thirty memory foam mattresses before they were rejected they were able to take one hundred and eighty mattresses between them and set aside the rest to come back and get.
"We need to tell people about this and send them out for more runs. And these should go a long way toward having a better night's sleep!" Tom said.
With that, the team hopped back into the GS2 and headed back to drop off the mattresses. Brian assured them that they would set up some for the team and pass the rest around as fairly as possible. They were able to grab the rest before heading back out on patrol again. Jay gleefully drove around again until the sun began to set.
The radio they took with them to communicate with the guild building, another courtesy of TJ and his team, went off.
"Home base to GS2, home base to GS2, come in GS2." The radio called.
"GS2 here, go ahead," Tom replied.
"There has been a break-in at home base. We need you back here pronto." The voice came back.