CHAPTER 26_HEX - A Zombie Survival LITRPG

Ray

Ray had been places in the world where he had seen rain fall, striking the ground in such an even spread that it sounded like a thunderclap. He had been places that have perpetual thunder and lightning storms. He had even seen active volcanoes.

He had never seen the sky spit purple fire.

Just visible through the hazy smoke, the sky seemed as if it had been made of glass. Cracks ran from the central point of impact that Jalla’s spell had caused. And it was leaking purple flames into the world. Ray shivered, even as the first sheet of dark fire uniformly slammed into the ground just off from the front lines of his men.

Terrified he was about to lose everyone, Ray was immensely relieved when he saw multiple blue domes pop up around his people. The Thymians spread out in the ranks had erected some kind of defense, preventing the fire from falling onto his people. They didn’t stop the undead from walking through, however, and anything that entered the domes was safe from the flames.

Everything outside those blue domes was annihilated. Everything, that was, except for the Smog Snail and some of the larger undead surrounding it. Ray could clearly make out more than a few Juggernauts in the horde, along with something that look like a puddle with tentacles sprouting out of it.

He wasn’t sure what that thing was, but as he struggled to see through both the smog and the fire, he saw many more of them than just the one loitering near the snail. None of the larger creatures were moving forward, almost as if …

The barrage of flame suddenly ceased, and two of the Draemons collapsed to the ground. The remaining four wearily slumped as several Orkin grabbed them and drug them inside the Outpost.

With the fire gone, Ray finally had a good look at the level of destruction such a … spell? Yes, it had to be a spell of some kind. That such a spell had caused. The creatures and undead between the front line and the Smog Snail had ceased to exist. While a few had made it into the safety of the blue domes, they had all been dispatched by the occupants.

Pulling up his System Menu, Ray noticed that he hadn’t lost a single troop as of yet. A roar sounded out across the newly created no man's land. Ray looked up in time to see the first massive hulk of undead flesh move forward. As if breaking some silently agreed-upon truce, the rest of the creatures behind it roared, screeched, and hissed out in unison as they stormed forward as well.

This was bad.

Ray had a good idea of how to stop one of those Juggernauts, but a dozen? Along with whatever creatures were accompanying them? That was a tall order. He just knew that a bunch of those on the front line were going to die.

Then the Aelvin stepped up. Every single one of them lifted their bows, pulled the strings taught, then released bright green streaks of light at the first huge Juggernaut. Ray nearly bit off his tongue when they all struck simultaneously, exploding with enough force to stagger the nearby monstrosities. The unfortunate creature they had singled out only had two remaining legs, the rest of it having been splattered across its companions.

“Holy fuck. What the fuck was that?” he asked in awe.

Gale stepped up beside him. Covered in gore, she wiped down her massive blade with a rage before saying, “That, Ray, was thy Aelvin archers. Rangers to be precise. They art adept at taking down single targets, regardless of size.”

The remaining monsters roared and began a full charge to their lines, their massive strides eating up the distance as they lumbered as quickly as they could to close the distance. The Rangers didn’t care. They calmly target one after another, to similarly devastating effect. By the time they reached the front lines, and the Orkin and Goblins, there were only two left. The Aelvin quickly stepped back, having exhausted whatever means they had for using such amazing abilities.

“Let's kill some fucking undead,” grunted Ray as he drew his blade.

Running forward, he used his newfound speed and strength to cut through several base undead with ease. He quickly passed the defensive lines that the Orkin and Goblins had set up and found himself fighting through the remaining undead to reach the first Juggernaut. Josephine and Gale kept pace with him the entire time, ensuring that he didn’t get cut off or surrounded.

Like the two women, the moment he passed the defensive line, the blue bubbles went down and the line advanced to follow in his wake. It was then he got a first-hand account of how the Thymians fought.

Whipping past him and the others, bolts of lightning, acid, and wind tore into the legs and torsos of the remaining two monstrosities. A few even hit the Smog Snail, who bellowed in protest. Ray found himself having gotten close enough to a single one of the looming targets, so he began hacking at the ankle and knee of the nearly twenty-foot-tall fucker.

He had been cutting through undead using some strength up to this point, but he had never had to utilize everything in one strike before. This time, however, he put everything he had into the first swing into the monster's leg. He was more surprised at anyone when the blade went into the leg cleanly, got caught on bone, and summarily broke. Ray brought the remains of the blade out from the leg on the other side, nearly bisecting it completely.

With a screech not unlike that from one of the much smaller creatures, the Juggernaut tipped over slowly, balanced on one leg briefly, then crashed to the ground in a roaring cascade of flesh, blood, and bile. It was then swarmed by Goblins, the little mischief makers ditching their spears and climbing up on top of it using their daggers like ice picks.

Then somehow it caught on fire.

Ray stared at it in confusion, wondering just how something like that can catch fire when no fire was used.

Then it exploded.

With a meaty pop, the entire area was covered in gore. Even the fucking snail used an antenna to clean the gunk out of one of its eye stalks. The mess on the ground was much worse, and it made the entire situation much more dangerous. Now not only did they have to contend with a remaining Juggernaut and the Smog Snail, who still hadn’t attacked outright, but they also had to traverse a much tricker environment to do so.

“Fuck me, this can’t-“ Josephine slapped a gore-covered hand over his mouth. He gagged as some of the rotten flesh and bile dripped into his mouth.

“No flags,” she said simply, glaring at him.

Ray would have swallowed, but his gag reflex wouldn’t allow it. He nodded quickly and began spitting out anything that had fallen into his mouth the moment she removed her hand. Josephine smirked a bit at that and then jerked Ray off his feet.

An eye stalk smashed into the ground where he had just been standing, cratering it. The huge eye came up out of the ground, and the lid opened to display a massive bloodshot eyeball staring at the top of them.

“Holy fuck!” he yelled as they both backed off quickly.

A lone Goblin ran past them, knives out, screeching random warbling words in some distorted version of a war cry. The Smog Snail smushed him with a second eye stalk.

“Argh! Not Gunkz!” roared Grok, pointing at the snail who turned his way in confusion. “That fukkin ting smashed Gunkz! Get im boyz!”

A small tidal wave of Goblins flowed past Ray and Josephine and rushed the startled snail. Why such small things were trying to attack it, the creature knew not. All its small brain could comprehend that they were smaller than it was, they were angry, and there were fifty-five million of them.

And some of them were on fire. Somehow.

Goblins went down in ones and twos as the eye stalks wreaked havoc on their charge, but not a single Goblin was deterred. The remaining four or five dozen rapidly began scaling the back and sides of the now panicking creature as it turned and attempted to snail away. But it didn’t get very far. While the back was covered in a massive, thick, nearly impenetrable smog-spewing shell the head and eye stalks were fleshy vulnerable bits. Something the Goblins realized quickly.

The small green army made its way up to the fleshy part and began carving out large, steak-like portions of flesh. The Smog Snail rapidly went from large and imposing to a rapidly diminishing carcass.

Ray knew the moment the dark smoke stopped pouring off the things back that it was dead. Sunlight rapidly began to filter through the diminishing smog, causing the remaining Juggernaut to start smoking. Patting out the bursts of flame that were coming off its body, it caught one last strong ray of sunshine and burst into flames.

Bellowing in rage, and possibly pain but Ray wasn’t sure the undead could feel pain, it rushed off towards the side of the pier, ran down the length of it, the promptly exploded into ash just before it reached the safety of the water.

A ragged cheer went up from everyone as a group-wide notification from the System came through. Well, everyone except the Goblins who were still stabbing the dead Smog Snail.

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EVENT COMPLETED – KILL THE SMOG SNAIL

SOMEHOW YOU ARE NOT ONLY ALIVE BUT HAVE ACCUMULATED VERY FEW FATALITIES. EVEN MORE INCREDULOUS IS THE FACT YOU KILLED A SMOG SNAIL WITH GOBLINS. WILL WONDERS NEVER CEASE

EVENT REWARDS

NEX: 18,500

RESOURCE CHEST X2

RANDOM BUILDING CHEST X1

UPGRADE TOKEN X2

SNAIL MEAT 500 LBS

ASSORTED RUBBLE X4 TONS

“Snail meat? The System gave … rubble. Did it give me fucking rubble? What the fuck?” Ray wondered aloud. “Just what the hell?”

Gale looked at Ray oddly, “Thou are right to be worried. It seems the System itself may not be functioning to its regular standards,” she said, speaking slowly as if finally sounding out an idea she had had for a while now. “Thy world is broken. In more ways than one, Ray. Perhaps the System cannot function fully until the Integration has been completed?”

“I just … why even work at all then? It’s weird we even have any of these prompts if the System isn’t supposed to be active,” he grumped back. “It gave me a pile of fucking rocks as a reward. Rocks, Gale.”

He showed her his list of rewards, and as her eyes went down the list, they widened in alarm.

“Ray, do not under any circumstances use thy reward for Assorted Rubble. Mine suspicious are that thou may be pleasantly surprised if mine guess is on its mark,” she said quietly. “It may be most fortuitous for thee.”

Ray shook his head and pushed the conversation out of his mind. Looking out at the carnage, most of the undead were beginning to turn to ash in the sunlight. The odd tentacle things had been, apparently, offshoots of the Smog Snail itself. They, along with the body of the snail itself, however, remained in all its gory glory. Sunlight didn’t burn everything to ashes apparently.

“Why isn’t the snail dissolving Gale?” he asked, wondering aloud what they all must have been thinking.

Gale responded quickly and clearly, “Tis because the creature is not an undead. It seems to have mutated naturally within the confines of thy Systems limitations.”

“That’s a natural evolution? The fuck it is,” said Ray incredulously, gesturing at the huge carcass. “That thing is anything but a natural evolution. Evolution takes place over the course of millennia, not days.”

“Not where the System is concerned,” replied Gale. “Evolutions into varied tiers happen when one reaches a threshold. Level plays quite the role as well.”

Ray pulled up his stats screen, noticing that he was still level one. “Why am I still level one then? Shouldn’t I have, you know, gotten stronger?”

Gale pondered on this while he went through his screens, annoyed that he hadn’t leveled, much less gotten a class yet. He voiced as much to Gale, who just looked at him pensively for a while. Eventually, however, she did give him a possibility as to why.

“Thou art a conundrum in several ways, Ray. Mine ideas are twofold. The first being that thou, as the core holder, cannot gain a class until Integration and thus the full activation of the System upon thy world,” she explained. He nodded at that, so the Drakling continued, “Mine second idea is much more … aggravating. In as much that you have not met the threshold for the class you are meant to have. While the possibilities are endless as to why these are mine best two guesses.”

“Nothing about this stupid System is working right apparently. Thank god that what we do have works correctly,” Ray complained. “At least the shop used to work correctly. I can't even purchase more people. Hell, it's not even letting me resurrect people!”

“Be wary Ray, thy System is unlimited with such services. Yes, thou may pay a fee in NEX, but the fee quickly becomes exorbitant for additional resurrections,” Gale warned. “For example. Check Josephine’s cost for a projected resurrection.”

Curious, Ray did just that. His quick intake of breath was all the confirmation Gale needed. “What was thy cost?” she asked, also somewhat curious. She knew that, as a general rule of thumb, the cost for a resurrection was ten times the prior cost. This was negated, of course, by various benefits of a particular group or political entity's bonuses. But it was never zero.

“It’s a million,” he said quietly.

Gale choked, absolutely gobsmacked at the sheer quantity of NEX required for a basic resurrection. Usually, there was a base cost plus level, plus a specific amount for class. It could build quickly, true, but for basic System residents? Never had she had never heard of such a cost for a System resurrection. She herself had been killed and resurrected multiple times in a prior contract. That wouldn’t be possible here.

Recovering quickly she stared at Ray, “What was the amount thou paid previously?”

“Fifty,” he said again, just as quiet. Then, looking away from his screens and at her, he said, “This … I can't bring back anyone more than once at this rate.”

Gale wasn’t sure how a human would eat thoughts, but one thing was for certain. The System on this world was very, very broken. She wasn’t sure why but it was clear something here had either gone very wrong or changed dramatically compared to other locations that had integrated into the System.

She watched as Ray continued going through his menus, cursing the entire time. She couldn’t blame him, not in the least.

Sighing audibly, the frustrated man closed everything out and stared off at the Goblins and Orkin who were in the process of disassembling the giant snail. As he watched, he mulled through their next courses of action.

“Gale, I think we need to push harder. As hard as we can. We only have a little less than half the time left before integration,” Ray said calmly even while knowing what she was going to say. “I know,” he said again, cutting off her reply. “But we can't wait. We still need to go back and swap out the core for the node I have. We just can't wait any longer. If we do, we may not get another chance to move the core.”

Gale knew he was right. It wasn’t the best choice of action, but it was the only one that guaranteed they would be able to move the core to the island. This would, without a doubt, result in far more security and stability.

“As thou wish,” the Drakling advisor replied grimly. “I will rally everyone and speak with Jalla.”

They simply had no other choice.

Just as she turned to leave, Ray muttered, “I wonder if Goblins will eat snail meat?”

***

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