CHAPTER 22_HEX - A Zombie Survival LITRPG

Ray

Grok broke the lines to charge at the behemoth, but a new problem reared its head. All the Death Slugs that had retreated came back, quickly surrounding the Orkin. The Goblins, however, were having none of that. The carefully assembled line of combatants broke apart as everyone involved charged. The quick little bastards had collectively dropped their spears and pulled out wicked-looking knives. Which they used to devastating effect.

Slicing arm joints, stabbing eyes and finding small weak points in the folds of flesh. Ray was honestly amazed at the level of chaos and devastation the little creatures were causing. Every enemy they disabled was quickly finished off by a trailing Orkin. They almost lazily dispatched the fallen, occasionally taking on one that had either been slightly wounded.

Josephine and Gale, on the other hand, had picked up the fallen spears and were hurling them at the massive hive next that Grok had engaged. There were already a half dozen spears jutting out the of the thing's head, and it was bleeding heavily all over the ground. That was going to be gross to clean up.

The Goblins and Orkin had a system going, keeping most of the Death Slugs from interfering with Grok’s duel. Although with Gale and Josephine’s support it was more of a boss fight than anything. Ray didn’t have much to do but sit back and take care of any stragglers that slipped through the cracks and came at the engineering team.

The Humans, while far from defenseless, lacked the overall stats or abilities that the others had. Being so new, they had focused on the repair of the barge and moving the base. There had been little time to train them up so they were support personnel at best. They had, however, unanimously voted in Derrick to lead their group. Ray wasn’t sure what kind of leadership group he had in mind as of yet. But he knew that there were already a few key players.

The battle progressed onward around them, with Ray continuing to pick off stragglers that broke through. He wasn’t sure how long they fought, but he imagined it had been a good few hours at least. The sunlight leaking in through the windows told him that it was probably not far off from high noon.

His thoughts were interrupted by a scream that pierced his brain like an icepick through his skull. As he turned, he witnessed the massive slug slam into the ground with a rounding thud that took several nearby Goblins right off their feet.

Grok stood on top of the thing's head, axe raised high as if in tribute to some long-lost barbarian king. He had ridden that slug like the biggest, nastiest bronco on Earth and come out on top. Then he brought down his sharp shiny toy with both hands and, with one smooth movement, severed the giant Death Slugs head from its body.

A cry came up from the Goblins and Orkin, causing the few remaining creatures to hesitate and falter. Watching closely, Ray came to the conclusion that these things were not undead. Contrary to what they had come across so far. Just Gale’s confirmation earlier that Bone Spiders were a thing made him shiver. But this just lent more evidence to the fact that the undead were not the only things that they would have to contend with going forward. Based on what they experienced here, the opposition would be varied and numerous the more they spread out to retake the world.

“Good job Grok!” he yelled out, causing another round of cheers. “Mop these fucks up so that we can establish an outpost!”

Grok yelled in agreement and was poised to jump down when everything went wrong. In hindsight, maybe Ray should have realized that anything that went to plan should be expected to go wrong at some point. No plan survives contact with the enemy after all.

The egg sack on the back of the giant Death Slug, with no warning or build-up, exploded. It showered the area with gore, slime, and most importantly of all baby slugs. Baby slugs with teeth. Hundreds of them. The group quickly found themselves going from winning a fight nearly one-sided with minor injuries, to a defensive footing.

“Pull back! Back!” shouted Ray as the Goblins and Orkin assembled themselves in a semi-circle facing outwards around the door they had come through. He couldn’t see Grok at all. Hopefully, he had survived that epically disgusting biological explosion.

Then shit really hit the fan.

The rearmost engineer, a young man by the name of Wilson, went down under a pile of undead that had come into the building behind them. He was quickly torn to pieces under their claws. Ray really should have had someone watching their backs.

Hearing the screams, Ray turned only to see even more undead streaming through the wide doorway and into the cavernous warehouse. They were now surrounded. With hundreds of baby Death Slugs in front and an unknown number of undead behind them, they were rapidly being squeezed in the middle.

Ray leaped forward with Josephine at his side. They cut through the undead that had killed Wilson and cleared the first line of ghoulish rotting bodies that faced them. Ray struggled with his use of one arm, but his obvious opening was offset by Josephine’s Class Abilities. Every few seconds her blade glowed, allowing her to cleave through multiple enemies in a single swing. Envious, he continued to kill the old-fashioned way. One mother fucker at a time.

However, they were still being pressed backward. Thankfully the Goblins and Orkin facing the slugs were killing them quickly, only a few of them having fallen to the surprise attack. This meant that their breathing room was slowly expanding forward into the warehouse.

With no fanfare or announcement, Grok dropped into the middle of the undead streaming through the doors. With a spinning slash, he cut down nearly two dozen, opening up a massive breach in their line. This allowed Ray and Josephine to push forward, eliminating the creatures between them and their green comrade as well as establishing a combat line at the door. This stopped the tide of undead from entering behind them.

“Where the hell did you come from?” yelled Ray as he removed another undead head from its shoulders.

“Fukk blewed me into da raftaz boss. I jus swung on ovahz and dropped dahn,” he roared in return, sweeping his axe back and forth to cut several of the monsters in half.

Suddenly Grok sprouted a white quill from his shoulder, causing him to spin while cursing in a language. Ray looked over the top of his fallen friend to see several of the white spider-like creatures perched on several storage racks. They were reaching down and picking up undead as they passed. Only to rip them to pieces and form bone spears to hurl at them.

“Those bastards again! Shit, I hope my skinless friend isn’t hanging around,” muttered Ray worriedly as Grok stood up and ripped out the spike.

Glaring at the white creatures, the Orkin roared a challenge at them. Contrary to what Ray expected to happen, the things screeched back and charged at him, knocking over any mindless undead between them and their target. Slamming together, the three immediately went into a frenzied brawl-style fight.

He shook his head as once again Grok was enveloped in a brawl of his own making, only this time there would be no space to help him. There were simply far too many basic undead within the building. How they had gotten there when they had cleared it out up to this point, Ray had no idea.

But he wasn’t going to let that stop him.

Ray and Josephine continue their systematic elimination of the undead coming at them. He took note that they flowed around the two white creatures and Grok, letting him know that somehow they knew not to attack them. This would warrant investigation at a later time. When things weren’t trying to eat him.

He cut through a dozen more undead in rapid succession then noticed that a Goblin was next to him, supporting him with its spear. Then more Goblins appeared, then Orkin. The fight on the other side of them must have wrapped up for them to be joining in. Ray grinned at that. Hopefully, things would wrap up quickly now.

However, the fight continued. The entry to the warehouse was packed shoulder to should with undead. Every so often a specialized undead would show up, causing Josephine or Gale to leap into the fray and put it down before it could cause too much damage.

Ray lost himself to the ebb and flow of the battle. He was scraped, bruised, cut, and battered, never having been this tired in his entire life. Eventually, however, the flow of undead slowed. Everyone breathed a sigh of relief as they realized that the horde was, hopefully, beginning to die down.

True to belief, it wasn’t much more than an hour later that the survivors of the escapade stood breathing hard in the middle of a mountain of bodies.

“There … has to be a thousand plus of those fuckers here,” gasped Ray, who was still struggling to catch his breath. “A thousand. On top of the hundreds of the … Death Slugs, we killed in the other room.”

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He took a good look around. There were two battered Orkin and five very beat-up Goblins still alive. Four engineers, plus poor Wilson, had also died. That left himself, Gale, Grok, and Josephine as their heavy hitters. In all, a little more than two dozen people survived Ray’s gambit to take the building.

“Fuck. Fuck!” Ray yelled, throwing his blade onto the ground. He immediately picked it back up and slipped it into the sheathe at his waist after a few attempts, not quite used to missing an arm as of yet. “Fuck,” he repeated one more time. “Let's get the shop up and fortify this building. If this is what was at the unpopulated end of the island then we could be utterly fucking screwed when we move up it. We need more.”

Gale nodded tiredly at that and turned to Derrick. Between the two of them, they soon had the Goblins unloading enough materials to get the level one shop re-established. The very moment their group crossed the threshold of the warehouse to move back to the ship Ray got a notification from the System.

EVENT COMPLETED – DEATH SLUG RODEO CLEARED

NEX AWARD: 5,240

RESOURCE CHEST AWARDED

ALL STATS +1

DAMN, YOU SURVIVED? YOU SURVIVED! THAT’S GREAT! JOB WELL DONE. BE BETTER PREPARED NEXT TIME.

“Fuck you too,” grunted Ray. He mulled over the two chests he now had in his inventory. He had earned a War Chest from their last fight with his Nemesis. Now he had a Resources Chest. He wasn’t sure what they contained, as neither Grok nor Gale had ever seen the System grant physical rewards before.

Shrugging, and deciding that it was now or never, Ray pulled out the War Chest and examined it. The onyx-black chest appeared before him. It wasn’t small by any means, being the size of a large toybox. It was engraved with pulsing green lines that lit up the container in a hellish hue, holding heavens knows only what within.

Swallowing in apprehension, Ray put his hand on the lid. Checking that Josephine was nearby, he pushed it open. Immediately the box shattered into motes of light. Along with those motes, several notifications popped into his vision.

CONGRATULATIONS

YOU HAVE OPENED YOUR FIRST CHEST

WAR CHEST OF RETRIBUTION HAS BEEN USED

ITEMS AWARDED

BLADE OF RETRIBUTION

30 EMPYRION STEEL BLADES

10 EMPYRION STEEL SPEARS

4 EMPYRION BOWS

MAY THE GODS HAVE MERCY ON THE VICTIMS TO BE. -ARGYN, FORGEMASTER OF EMPYRION ARMS

“That … was not what I was expecting. Not that I knew what I was expecting. But still, odd,” he said.

Josephine raised an eyebrow at him, “What happened? I saw you touch the box, then it shattered. That was it.”

“I got a ton of some kind of weapon. Empyrion knives and blades? I … and not completely sure what that means,” he admitted. “I don’t have a good reference point for this. Maybe Gale knows.”

“Mayhap I know what?” the Drakling said, walking up behind him and causing Ray to jump. She laughed lightly as he glared at her. Quickly, he explained what he had just done and acquired. “Oh my. Empyrion weapons are some of the best weapons thou can acquire at a base level. They art powerful, nye unbreakable, and excellent for entry-level troops to use. I would recommend that thou equip thy Orkin and Goblins with such weapons. However, I know not of this Blade of Retribution. Thou shall have to experiment with it to discover its use, much as these things go.”

After a momentary pause, she continued, “These …chests that thou has acquired. They are strange. Thy System upon this world is strange. Be cautious of opening any further chests that may contain unusual wording. The System never does anything without cost,” she warned.

Josephine spoke up as well, “Using something that you know nothing about is always a risk. I recommend that you keep it somewhere safe until you are … fully healed and better able to respond to anything that may happen.”

“That’s … a really good point actually. I will just keep it in my inventory for now. Better safe than sorry,” Ray agreed. There was nothing quite like putting yourself into a situation you couldn’t get out of. Using an unknown weapon with a name that included the word ‘Retribution’ seemed like a good way to do just that.

Derrick walked up to the impromptu gathering, excited. “We found some intact vehicles in the far warehouse, they were even wrapped! There were a few more undead, but they were cleared out easily enough. Also, you really should invest in getting some more Goblins and Orkin. We don’t have enough people to really clear this Island now either.”

Ray grit his teeth, but eventually gave in. He had promised himself he would be more cognizant of the advice that others gave him. This was one of those times for sure.

“Fine. I don’t like it. I want to bring back more people. But you are absolutely correct. We need more front-line combatants,” he admitted, causing Gale and Derrick to smile in appreciation. “Once the shop is up and we have the barracks kitted out I will make the purchases.”

Derrick nodded happily and practically skipped away to do just that. Both would be required, by the System at least, in order to retain more people. Slaves required a one-to-one ratio of food and lodging in order to be held. While Ray didn’t like slavery, much less that it was utilized widely by the System itself. He did appreciate that the System at least made it as humane as possible. The fact that there was a requirement for basic food and lodging made it a tad more palatable.

He sighed, getting looks from Gale and Josephine. He couldn’t change anything overnight, but hopefully, he could at least make those that ended up here comfortable. Slave, refugee, or resurrected.

He couldn’t do much to help with only one available arm, so he grabbed a crate, took a seat, and began going through the System again. This time he was looking at the requirements for each refugee group. If he couldn’t focus purely on Humanity right now, he would at least try to help any of the groups that he saw were most in need.

That would be the best way to achieve the goal he wanted. But who said it had to be only humanity he brought back?

***

RAYMOND ‘RAY’ FINNEGAN

RACE

HUMAN

CLASS

NONE

NEX

CALCULATING

LEVEL

PHYSICAL STATE

GOOD

MENTAL STATE

ANNOYED

ATTRIBUTE

BASE

CURRENT

NEX TO INCREASE

STRENGTH

AGILITY

POWER

100

WISDOM

LUCK

400

JOSEPHINE SANCHEZ