The latest System purge lit a fire under his ass. Logan kicked his swimming into high gear, Ernie easily keeping pace beside him until Logan’s feet hit the rocky shore bottom.
There weren’t any coal power plants close by, but the latest message still caused a knot of worry to fester in his stomach. A hydro electricity dam powered Hope’s End, but that meant nothing. Surge spillover was a major problem. Logan knew they had power share agreements with other areas—as one station went down, the other picked up the load. Eventually, it would be like playing a game of Jenga: each block pulled meant the structure weakened, until the whole tower collapsed.
Not to mention what that would do to internet and cell service. He remembered a time when half the country lost service due to an internal cell network problem, and that wasn’t even during the apocalypse.
Even though urgency was surging through him, he was still cautious when he breached the surface, sticking his head out like a seal and glancing around.
Ernie mimicked him, his head bobbing as his tentacles acted like a surfboard, letting him drift with the current. “We escaped!”
Ernie was right.
No snakes.
They must have swum far enough away; either that, or after Logan was no longer in view, the effects of the Eager Beaver title wore off and the snakes slithered through the air and returned to Rattlesnake Island.
Logan walked onto the beach, water pouring down his body, Ernie trailing behind him. Smoke continued to saturate the air, the sun bright red through a layer of smog. There was a sharp campfire odour, so foul that he felt it at the back of his throat, causing his festering worry to worsen. Logan knew that smell. The fire had gotten closer.
As soon as Logan was on solid ground, he pulled his cell out of his spatial collar and powered it on, holding it in one hand while he removed a towel and ran it through his wet hair.
His phone dinged. Logan dropped the towel and navigated to his text messages, and then promptly deflated. No text messages. But that didn’t mean anything. There was no cell service. Pacing, he held his phone up to the sky, watching the network bars for any change.
Nothing.
His shoulders slumping, Logan sat down on the sandy beach, digging his bare toes into the sand. There were two possibilities. Either Lara was in trouble—the fire, monsters, any number of things—and she couldn’t send an update, or Logan was making a mountain out of a molehill.
There were areas around the lake that had spotty cell service even before the apocalypse. His phone had been powered off. It had also been inside what for all he knew was a dimensional storage device. Even if he’d passed through areas closer to a cell tower, it wouldn’t have done anything.
Besides, there wasn’t anything he could do. Logan felt helpless and ready to pull his hair out in worry, but he couldn’t get to Lara and the kids any faster. He had to trust that they were okay and that he’d find them alive when he arrived at Hope’s End. Any other possibility was unthinkable.
Ernie poked him with a tentacle and then rested it against Logan’s leg. “I’m hungry,” he said with sad eyes.
Come to think of it, Ernie did look pale. Just how much did he need to eat every day to stay healthy? Even though the lake had lots of fish, the mystery of his appearance persisted. With so much life in the ocean, it seemed strange that he would escape it, especially considering his bloodthirstiness.
“Ernie, you mentioned something about your journey here. About escaping?” Logan gave him an encouraging smile. “Since you rival all, what did you need to escape?”
Ernie puffed up, blowing his cheeks. “Not escaping, Logan! Never escaping!” Then, in a mumble, “Tactically retreating.”
“I’ll give you that. You’re a cunning thing, that’s for sure. But what did you retreat from?”
“Sky people. Invaders! With mechanical arms and hovering monstrosities! They gobbled up my brethren, one after another. But of course, rivaling all, I, Ernie, darted away, and lived to kill another day!”
Logan furrowed his brow. In Ernie-speak, that could mean two things. Either someone had figured out how to bypass the aircraft System purge, or someone else was doing something hinky. And by else, he meant someone alien. “Were the sky people human?”
Ernie gave him an unimpressed look. “They were in the sky. I rival all, but I couldn’t fly to see, despite my earnest wishes!” His eyes became unfocused. “Flying,” he crooned. “I would become a mighty slaughtering god. Such dreams, Logan, such dreams.”
For fuck’s sake, now, in addition to mutated monsters and a one-year massive population System purge deadline, he had another threat to worry about. But why would someone be after octopuses? It made no sense.
“Were they doing anything else over the ocean? Taking samples of other aquatic life?”
Ernie’s tentacles drooped. “Singularly focused! They wanted all my brethren. They need to pay! They need to…” He suddenly examined Logan, his eyes considering, before he brightened. “Logan, we are slaughter buddies, yes?”
“…. Yes?”
“You are growing stronger. Already, in one day, you have commenced in a slaughter of the yucky snake monsters like no one else! And you will grow even more powerful, yes?”
“…. Maybe?” Logan didn’t like where this was going.
“Yes yes yes! You will grow powerful, powerful enough to challenge the sky people and avenge my brethren! We will crush them and pummel them out of the sky into a mess of guts and a plethora of blood! They will be stacked underneath our…”
Logan sighed and tuned Ernie out. At this point, he’d realized there was no stopping him during a slaughter monologue, better to just let him wear himself out.
***
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Logan let Ernie plop into the water to go after fish while he experimented. He figured he had time to burn while he was ahead of schedule. Pushing his body to the brink of collapse and stretching beyond what he thought was possible had one distinct advantage. They’d moved through the lake like a bullet while fleeing for their lives. In one battle, they’d travelled more than he could do in two days.
Despite the urgency of the smoke in the air, if he arrived at Hope’s End before the agreed upon time, he’d have to venture into the city to find Lara and the kids rather than meeting them at Richton’s Tomb. What would happen if they’d already left while he was looking? They could end up endlessly missing each other. And if the cell network were down, they’d have no way to communicate.
Even though Logan would like nothing better than to see Lara and reassure himself that she was okay, he had to make the smart decision. It made sense to stick to the same timeline.
If he had time to burn, that meant he could do an inventory—both of his supplies and his own level of fitness for the next fight. Logan used the same towel to dry off as best as he could, and then examined his injuries. The blood had washed off in the water, and the wounds on his back and neck had knitted together, the injuries slightly tender but no longer dripping blood. His missing toe and finger had grown back—to the point where he couldn’t tell he’d been missing them in the first place—and his last constitution attribute boost made him feel flush with vitality.
He was missing patches of hair on his scalp from the fight with the undead mushrooms, but while the patches had been raw and sore before, now, they were healed over—but still bald. Logan supposed that increased constitution didn’t help with hair loss. Smirking, his thoughts drifted to his fiery, bald grandfather, who had loved nothing better than to rant at every injustice around him. He would have been pissed about the hair loss loophole if he were still around.
As for the rest of his body, he’d never been in better shape in his life. Logan glanced down at his bare chest. He no longer had a hint of a belly; he had abs! Logan, with abs? His ex-girlfriend would have never believed it. His biceps were defined, a layer of steel hidden underneath his muscles. But to continue increasing his physical fitness, he needed to protect himself.
That’s where [Mimicry Armour] would play a factor.
Logan pulled up the description of the skill for a refresher.
[This rare skill allows you to graft material within your environment to your body, creating a camouflaged layer of protection. Duration of the skill advances with Karma pool growth. Level of the skill advances with the complexity of the material.]
Depending up on the length of the fight, with his increased Karma pool, he should be able to run [Mimicry Armour] longer, possibly too long to count. But unlike [Deepwater Explorer], the skill level wouldn’t increase the longer he held it. Rather, leveling it relied on the ‘complexity’ of the material. That either meant that if he spread the armour to other areas of his body, he’d level the skill, or he’d have to wait until he figured out how to use things other than sand.
Yet, everywhere around him, he had sand, dirt, gravel, and more sand. That meant advancing the armour to other parts of his body would be his best option. Unless the fight had warped his sense of time, Logan knew the armguard and partial neck shield had lasted at least ten minutes with his previous Karma pool.
Still, that was just his arm and neck. He needed to monitor his Karma as he spread the armour. There was no point in figuring out how to create a suit of flexible armour for his whole body if it drained his entire pool in an instant. The skill would be worthless.
It was a matter of tactics.
Logan got to his feet, jumping up and down to flex his muscles, stretching his arms and wiggling his toes in the sand. Then, cracking his neck, he stared at the beach. Deploying [Mimicry Armour] was as easy as riding a bike; at this point, it was effortless. Logan commanded the sand to cover his arm and neck, grafting it into solid, flexible sandstone. Part of the skill allowed for camouflage, but that was a lower priority. He didn’t need to hide; he needed protection against the next snake siege.
Scrunching his nose in concentration, Logan gathered more sand, forcing it to hover and latch onto his chest, right over the abs and muscles he’d been admiring. It was like piecing together chainmail, one layer at a time.
Unlike chainmail though, once he attached a piece, it merged into the whole, forming one massive, flexible layer of armour. Logan had advanced the skill, covering not only his arm, shoulder and neck, but his chest as well. This was the tricky part. Such success made him want to continue, hell, why not form it all over his body? But that wasn’t the purpose of this. Not yet.
Logan pulled up his Karma pool and kept it up, like having a running tally on a fitness watch—only, in his mind.
500/510.
499/510.
500/510.
499/510.
His wisdom attribute was at work! The skill was draining his Karma, but not so quickly that his Karma regeneration rate couldn’t keep up. That meant that at the current level, he could run the skill indefinitely!
Excitement surging, Logan flexed his arm, bunching his stomach as he tested the flexibility of the armour. It still amazed him that it was as flexible as a glove, yet as hard as stone. He had no restriction in movement whatsoever; it was as if it were part of his body, a Logan-exoskeleton.
Watching his Karma pool out of the corner of one eye, he switched his focus to gathering more sand and then spread it to his other arm. The armour merged with the rest, covering both arms, his chest, and his lower neck.
499/510.
497/510.
495/510.
493/510.
Damn. As he held the skill, his Karma pool continued to deplete, the lower Wisdom regeneration rate having no chance of catching up. And that was just from extending it to his other arm? He would hate to see what happened when he utilized the camouflage feature.
There were two factors here. If he extended the armour to both arms, according to his calculations, the skill would run; run for at least ten minutes. If the fight were brief, it wouldn’t matter. However, the battle with the snakes had taken way longer than ten minutes, and the armguard had protected him against one nasty, persistent snake. He would hate to lose it during a critical moment. Logan had gotten much better at monitoring himself for Karma depletion, but he wouldn’t put it past the System to decide to penalize him by suffocating him to death.
For now, it was smarter to use [Mimicry Armour] to form the flexible armour around his chest and only one arm.
“Logan?”
Logan looked up from examining his chest armour. Ernie had returned.
“Any luck?”
Ernie looked like a long-haired wet dog with sad eyes. “Only two tasty treats—two! And they were morsels, a snack at best.”
“How far did you go?”
His look was shifty. “Around.”
Logan gave him a narrow-eyed look. He refused to believe that the bloodthirsty thing was having trouble hunting, not at level 58.
“And I’m so hungry!” Ernie whined, blinking his black marble eyes.
“Does that mean you want my help?”
Ernie trailed a tentacle on the ground. “You did say you would catch me tasty treats. It’s important to follow through on your commitments! That’s how healthy relationships work!”
Logan smirked. They needed to get going anyway, so he wouldn’t call Ernie out on his bullshit. But he’d learned something new. Ernie could be a manipulative octopus, an octopus who’d much rather have Logan do the work, at least when it came to food gathering. Turn this around into a slaughter adventure, and Ernie would be pulling him into the lake.
“All right,” said Logan. “We’ll go, but you’ll have to help. I’ll bring the fishing net and we can work together. Why don’t you scare the fish with your tentacles, herding them toward me and into the fishing net.”
Ernie’s eyes brightened. “I like this plan!”
Besides, going underwater would give Logan a chance to escape the smoke. It had to be a bizarro world when you wanted to go underwater to utilize a [Deepwater Explorer] skill to get access to fresh air.
Before he dipped into the lake, Logan scrounged as best as he could, throwing driftwood, logs, and boulders into his spatial storage. This beach was sparse, but he’d still managed to find enough to be useful if he needed it in a pinch. He also deployed [Mimicry Armour], forming the exoskeleton suit over his chest and one arm.
As the water closed around him and he dropped down into the deep, Logan considered taking out the Cursed Rope, but its behavior made him hesitant. And after all, he had Ernie with him.
Nothing could rival a level 58 octopus in the water.