It was all very well and good to try to save people, but if they didn’t trust him, there was a limit to what Logan could do.
They gave him blank-faced looks, looks full of suspicion and fear.
The adults stood in front of the kids in a circle, the kids either cowering behind them or peering around their legs in curiosity. Worst of all, the two people with guns were the only ones past level 20, and many of them hadn’t leveled up at all!
“You need to move. We have minutes at best before this building comes down on top of you.”
“You’re just trying to trick us,” said the woman with the gun. “I know what your kind wants. To force us outside in front of the horde so we have to sign contracts!”
“I’m not in league with the rats! I’m trying to save you.”
Brooke laughed without humor. “That’s what they all say—”
Behind her, a woman with long dark hair pushed her way in front of Brooke, her face slack with disbelief. “Logan?”
Logan blinked. Although he’d been searching for his family, he’d never expected to come across anyone else from before the integration.
“Sarah?”
Sarah had never once showed up for work in anything other than a business suit and high heels, so it was hard to recognize her in scruffy jeans and runners. It was like encountering your boss while on vacation; the picture didn’t compute. She looked horrible, nothing like she normally appeared while at the office, but it was undeniably her. Sarah had taken over Logan’s department at work after they’d fired his last supervisor due to poor annual results.
At first, he’d liked her, thinking that she brought a fresh perspective and didn’t micromanage as much as his previous boss, but after she’d attended a sales conference at the corporate head office, she’d turned into a nightmare. Timing how long they spent in the bathroom, giving them daily sales call time limit goals, humiliating his coworkers in front of everyone else if they didn’t make their sales quotas. Logan knew corporate had forced her to do it to keep her job; she’d been under pressure from the higher ups to not be yet another management failure, but she’d still done it. It hadn’t been a good look.
But since she’d been abrasive and in a position of authority and power over Logan, he automatically assumed she’d do the same in this new world. He was shocked when he scanned her with [Idiot’s Inspect] and realized that she was weak as fuck:
[Sarah Tarson: Level 7. A human being.]
[Highest Stat: Wisdom. Characteristics: A healer who can’t yet heal. Hidden name: Sarah.]
In turn, Sarah glanced at him with her face slack with shock. She gave him a once over, from his feet to the top of his head, lingering on his chest and shoulders where his shirt clung to his body and stretched the fabric. “No,” she whispered. “It’s not possible. It is Logan, isn’t it?”
Having her look at him that way gave him the creeps. Logan was all for being attractive, but not to his devil of a boss, hell no.
“Yeah, it’s me. I’m glad you survived,” he said, his voice short.
“What happened to you? How is it possible that you look like that? It’s been only a week!”
“From struggling and surviving, just like everyone else.”
“Sarah,” interjected Brooke. “You know this man?”
Sarah blinked again as if she couldn’t believe what she was seeing. Then she crept closer to Logan, scrutinizing his face with scrunched up eyebrows. Her voice sounded dazed. “He’s one of my employees.” She swallowed as she stared at his chest again. “Or… he was.”
Logan scrubbed the back of his neck and shifted uncomfortably. “We’ve established that it’s me; great. We don’t have time for anything else. I didn’t barge in here to say hi. Sarah, you know me! You know I wouldn’t lie about something like this! Not when the lives of kids are in jeopardy. We have minutes at best. You need to leave.”
Sarah looked at the group, at the scared children, and then frowned. “We better do what he says. It could be a trick, but I worked with this man. I don’t think he’s in league with the rats.”
Brooke scowled. “Why would the rats be charging over here and bashing into buildings? They don’t do that! It doesn’t make any sense!”
Logan felt his ears grow warm. “Yeah… that might have been my fault. I kind of… taunted them? It was a stupid decision. Something I regret, obviously.”
For all the lessons he’d learned in the last week, Logan realized that in many ways, he still had a lot to learn. Who knew that in addition to emotions fuelled by the Cursed Rope, he’d need to be on the lookout for follies such as pride.
In a way, he could give himself allowances. A week ago, he’d been an office worker, not a warrior. The problem was that he didn’t have the luxury to learn hard lessons. If he screwed up, he wasn’t messing up a business deal, he was messing with lives. It might not just be his own life on the line, but others. If he hadn’t taunted the rats, he wouldn’t have enraged them into a stampede, and these people would have been safe.
Logan looked down at the floor as an unsettled feeling rushed through him. Rather than feeling pride at what he’d accomplished in the last week, he felt shame.
“I can feel you stewing even inside this hot pouch,” said Ernie, using his mental voice. “So we enraged the rat monsters; so what? It’s convenient that we’ve found the little human children, yes? Now you can save them and build an empire.”
Logan blinked and raised his head. “Build an empire with a bunch of ragtag people? We need to find Lara and the kids, not save people who won’t make it into the one percent. This is taking needless time that we can’t afford.”
“To rule over these peons in our mighty thrones, we must build their loyalty. Take it from a Liche master, Logan! Loyalty will get you far. You’ve found your first minions! Now you must make them love you.”
The man with the gun, Chase, shot him a narrow-eyed glare. “If you screwed up, you screwed up. Nothing for it but to go forward. God knows I’ve learned that in the last week. Sarah, if you know this man, I’m willing to check it out.” His scowl deepened. “We’re not all leaving. Not yet. Not until I confirm the threat is real.” He directed a furious glare at the group. “Everyone stay here until I have a look.”
Logan’s shame turned into frustration. It would take too long. It was like watching a bunch of people who stood inside of a burning building in paralyzed indecision. Indecision about whether to escape while the flames spread over top of their heads.
Chase pushed his way through the swinging doors and into the hallway. “Show me this army.”
Logan followed, urgency eating away at his stomach, his face flushing with frustration. Chase was at least checking it out, but he was walking rather than running.
Logan growled, and then finally spat, “Fuck it,” as he grabbed the man by the back of his jacket collar like a sack of flour.
Chase swung his arms, letting out an alarmed squawk, shouting, “What the fuck, man!” but he could do nothing. Only hold on for the ride.
Logan used every ounce of power derived from his True Grit Rings to burst through the hallway and over the shattered glass front doors. Holding Chase by the back of his neck, Logan tilted the man’s face towards the charging horde. They were less than a block away, and in the distance was the boom of other buildings as they collapsed, bricks pouring down, the ground shaking.
“Do you believe me now?” Logan hissed.
Chase blanched. “Shit! Holy crap, okay! We need to move. We need to go!”
Logan didn’t wait for him to make his way back to the room at his own speed; there wasn’t time. Grabbing him by the back of the collar again, he dragged Chase through the entrance and into the hallway, the walls blurring by until they burst into the room.
If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.
“Not cool, man,” Chase muttered.
Brooke hadn’t let up her grip on her gun. She gave Logan a brittle look. “That didn’t look very friendly.”
Chase rubbed his neck and shot Logan a glare before he straightened. “We have minutes. Minutes at most before this whole building comes down on top of our heads. We need to leave.”
The people let out cries, the children whimpering. Then on mass, they grabbed what they could, garbage bags full of cans of food, clothing, water bottles. Some tried to drag sleeping bags and blankets, others grabbed bundles of towels.
They didn’t have time for this.
With a blink, Logan willed everything they were holding inside of his spatial collar. Everything disappeared with a pop, like magic. They let out cries of shock and fear, but Logan didn’t have time to explain that he hadn’t stollen their belongings. Let them think it was an evil plot deployed by the rat army. All the better, if it made them move their asses.
“Go!” he bellowed. “Go now!”
The floor was starting to shake, pictures falling off the walls in a shatter of glass. If he could have thrown all these people inside his spatial collar, he would have. Instead, Logan snatched two toddlers, holding one on the right, the other on the left, trying to be as gentle as possible, and then led the way through the doors and into the hallway. The parents screamed at him, but they followed, and then the rest, all fifty or more pouring down the hallway and outside.
As soon as they saw the charging rat army, they blanched and ran in the opposite direction down the street. Logan let the parents gather their toddlers from his arms, and then tried to help any others that were falling over their feet by urging them on.
“We’re going to die!” one of the adults wailed, quickly silenced by Chase, who jabbed the man by an elbow.
Logan kept picking up children, rushing past and depositing them far in front of the group before going back for more, but there were fifty people; it was impossible to keep up with the stragglers.
Soon, the rats made sounds of excitement, their claws clacking over the asphalt as they gained on the group.
Fuck.
There was no way they were going to outrun the army.
He could grab a few people, rush back and forth, but that would leave the majority exposed. It had been the rats’ aim to enslave people and force them to sign contracts, but Logan had riled them up and now they had blood in their eyes. If he didn’t do something, they’d never survive.
And it would be his fault.
He could stop, fight, and try to grab the rats’ attention, let the people escape while they were focused on Logan, but there were hundreds, perhaps thousands of these fuckers. Way too many would get away, dart past Logan and slaughter these people. Slaughter the children.
“Ernie,” he said, swallowing. “Get ready for the slaughter of your life. Kill as many as you can, turn them into minions, get them to turn on each other. It’s the only way this will work.”
Ernie scrambled out of his pouch and leaned over Logan’s shoulder, his eyes alight with glee. He swung his tentacles, hitting things only he could see out of the air. “Numbers and levels, slaughtering is fun! And we will save the weaklings, and they will be loyal like nothing else!”
Chase blanched as he saw Ernie. “What the hell is that?!”
“A friend!” beamed Ernie.
“Chase, how many can fight? We need to make a stand so the children can escape. A blockade of slaughter; we’ll be a bulwark; nothing will reach them.”
“Against that horde?” he panted, running, his face pouring sweat.
“We can fight. We’ll do what we can,” said Brooke on his other side. She’d tucked her gun into her waistband, her braid flying behind her. “Ten of us at least. We should be able to make a dent against the two-headed rats, but we can’t do anything against the others. They’re too strong.”
“That’s the best we can do. We’ll make a stand around this next corner once we pass this street. I can handle the swarm, but I’ll need you to kill any rats that dart around me or that get away. If we do well enough, I might be able to help you level up your group.”
Chase snorted, his face an unhealthy red. “Level up? Are you off your rocker? We just want to survive!”
As they turned the corner and darted behind the next building, Logan came to a stop. The others reluctantly followed.
“Keep the group together, Ellie!” Chase snapped at a woman who was urging the weaker adults forward. “Get them to safety! Otherwise, we need everyone who can fight to line up on me.”
Some of the adults who had leveled up looked like they could fight, but they gave Chase panicked looks and kept running.
“Goddammit!” he hissed. “Roger, I see you! If you don’t stop right now, I’m kicking you out of the group!”
A squirrely looking man with short, curly hair and a long nose with a scar skidded to a stop and gave Chase an innocent look. “Hey, I thought you wanted me to protect the kids. Just trying to help.”
Brooke snorted. “Sure.”
Sarah gave Logan one last helpless look and then picked up a child, swinging him over her back as she followed the others.
All in all, they’d ended up with fifteen adults who were ready to fight. The problem was that only half had weapons. Holy shit, how had these people managed to survive until now?
Logan hissed and ran a hand through his hair, then willed out a mass of crap from his spatial storage. Wrenches from his grandfather’s supply shed, his old baseball bat, Errol’s massive whip and one of Arsen’s daggers. He removed the Silverdagger armour, then gestured for them to go to town. “Take them, arm yourself. The whip is heavy. Someone with a strength build should take it.
Brooke had frozen. “How did you do that?”
“Does it matter? Take what you can to survive.” Logan no longer had to worry about his spatial storage collar, not against these people. There was no way they’d be able to take it even if they wanted to.
Chase hefted the whip, wincing at the weight, his eyes excited, while Brooke grudgingly took the baseball bat. Logan felt a pang of nostalgia as he gave up the weapon for the final time. He’d outgrown it, but it had been the only thing that had let him survive those first few days.
Another man took the dagger, and the others picked up the wrenches and armour. It would be the best he could do.
Now it was up to Logan.
He didn’t want to do this; in fact, he’d swore that he wouldn’t, but in a kill or be killed world, he’d learned that he needed to do whatever he could to survive. That meant that he’d have to use a skill ring that made his stomach slosh in disgust. But in the fight with the Silverdagger Clan, Thorin’s skill ring had made the difference. It could create copies that were the exact replicas of the original. That meant he could generate five other Logan clones, giving him a chance against the horde.
And yet, he had no idea how it worked.
For the first time, he began to regret not trying it out before now. It had been stupid to disregard the ring just on principle.
Grinding his teeth, Logan removed it from his spatial storage collar. Pinching it in his grip, he ran the pad of his thumb over the glinting black metal. It emitted an aura that made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up, something that made him sit up and take notice.
“Logan,” said Ernie, a tentacle twitching. “I don’t like the look of that.”
“It’s a necessary evil. Like the Cursed Rope.” With a blink, Logan willed out a handful of diamond dust and sandstone and reformed his ten-inch-long talons on his left glove, then sculpted more manageable talons on his sword arm glove. Lastly, he took out his sword, the sharp edges glinting.
Biting his lip in anticipation, Logan put on the ring.
With a popping sensation… something happened. Holy fuck. One after another, five other Logan copies materialized, each holding a sword. Each wearing armour.
A woman with a buzzcut shouted, jumping away, while the others stared with wide eyes, but their reactions were secondary to what he was dealing with. It was all Logan could do to stay sane as his perception wrenched, as if he were looking through a looking glass, five of them all at once. If he concentrated on one clone, he could see through its eyes, as if he were the clone.
Thorin had owned this ring; and Logan felt that he could say the man hadn’t been a genius, which meant that he’d assumed using the ring would be easy, and yet holy hell, was it ever a trip. It was dizzying in its scope.
Hissing, he closed his eyes and tried to get his bearings.
His first clone wanted to rush into the fray and start slaughtering; his second clone wanted to use the Pink Sock to launch himself into the air and barrel into the horde; the third wanted to burst into the rats with his sword out, slicing off limbs and slashing everything into mush.
And yet the fourth and fifth clones didn’t have a desire to fight. Rather, they wanted to leave and find Lara and the kids; they were bursting at the seams to escape, urgency like nothing else surging through them to go go go.
Logan ground his teeth and exerted his will, forcing them to obey and work as one, a seamless whole. They were Logan and Logan was them. There was one willpower here, one master, and that was Logan.
One by one, he felt the clones fall in line, like soldiers who’d received orders and accepted them. They no longer had divergent needs and wants; they had Logan’s wants. They would obey. They would do what was necessary.
“Perhaps…” Ernie hesitated. “The nasty ring is not so bad? Perhaps it is fit for a being that rivals all?” Envy was in his voice. “I would be mighty indeed, with five Ernies to command.”
Logan winced. Ernie wouldn’t feel the same way once he knew what was truly around his finger; it wasn’t just a ring; it was the remains of someone. For all he knew, it was someone who was just as bright as Ernie.
But that was all the time Logan had for speculation. The horde was approaching like a swarm from hell. Dozens of two-headed rats poured down the street, followed by the swaying, teeth vibrating motion of the three-headed rats as if they were a drilling army. What followed was what truly made the ground shake. Fang led from the back, his red eyes glinting playfully, his mouths drooling venom. Around him, the other four-headed rats bashed into buildings with their barbed tails and shook the ground.
Brooke and Chase stepped behind Logan’s clones, each holding their guns up, Errol’s whip around Chase’s shoulder. The others held various weapons, their faces pale but determined.
“Watch out for their bites, teeth as well as tails. They have paralyzing venom.”
One of the men let out an unhinged laugh.
Chase grunted. “Don’t cut off their heads. Go for body shots. Cutting off a head will just make the monsters stronger.”
Logan had one more thing to do.
Rope, he said, as he willed out the Cursed Rope, grabbing it in a crushing grip and digging in with his talons. I need your help. I need you to do your worst. But if you attack the people around me; if you do anything but fight the rat army, it’s the end. No more slaughter, no more fun. I’ll ensure you fry until nothing but dust remains, an ending that you won’t come back from. No more Tree Fridges, no more owners. It will be the end.
The user is strong; the user is strong, the rope purred, flexing in his grip. Why would the rope disobey a strong user? A user that will only get stronger if it does what’s necessary?
Then do your worst, said Logan, as he let the rope fly.