Hey guys! Sorry for the long delay but book 4 of the This is not an Apocalypse series is now out and available on Amazon kindle. Hope you enjoy it!

Here's a teaser from chapter 1...

“ARGH!!”

“We have to get out of here!”

“This is all your fault Harry!”

“What!? You all agreed to come here with me!”

A small group of people huddled around each other in a large, derelict warehouse. It was the dead of night and completely dark but for the light of flashlights and camera phones. They were all wearing plain clothes and looked the worse for wear, several of them were bleeding from nasty looking cuts and one young woman was holding her side and breathing in short sharp gasps.

Surrounding them were piles of rusty, abandoned machinery, large crates and stacks of various mouldering materials. Also surrounding them were numerous strange clicking and scraping noises coming from the inky blackness all around.

“They’re all around us! What do we do?!” a girl screamed in panic, tears streaming down her face.

Just then, something glided into the light shone by the group’s flashlights. It was small, barely two or three feet in height, it looked like someone had placed an oversized misshapen, peeled potato on top of a floating black rubbish bag. Multiple clicking and scraping noises emanated from within the strange creature, it seemed to float just barely above the ground, slowly rotating.

Everyone just stared at it in horrified silence before it stopped rotating and the potato thing on its top split in half with a faint wet gurgle to reveal something resembling a toothless mouth, and then the black fabric beneath parted slightly to reveal an array of chitinous insectoid legs, pincers and claws.

One of the people screamed as the creature darted towards them but then suddenly, one of the nearby piles of junk scattered and a humanoid figure in armour burst through it. The new arrival quickly grabbed the small monster by the potato-like head appendage and crushed it with a lightning wreathed fist.

“Huh? Is this a double booking?” The new arrival turned to face the group of terrified people in confusion. “Wait…you're not hunters. What are you -? Oh! Just a ‘sec.” The new arrival paused his question and grabbed one of the strange creatures that had just leapt at him. He grabbed it out of the air and crushed it’s head just like the last one.

After that, a swarm of them rushed out of the surrounding darkness with strange moaning gurgles and clicking noises. The huddled group of humans cried out in horror, but the new arrival didn’t show any fear, he simply ran in amongst the attacking monsters and began easily dispatching them all with small but potent and accurately placed bolts of lightning.

The last creature standing seemed to notice its predicament and scuttled off back into the darkness. The armoured stranger watched it go before turning to the terrified people, he casually leaned against a nearby broken piece of machinery.

“Who are you guys? You’re not hunters are you? Where are your weapons?” he asked with a tilt of his head.

The group of people took the sight of the stranger in. He was wearing a fairly standard set of armour common amongst British monster hunters, modern bronze and red coloured plate armour over his torso and abdomen, vambraces, gauntlets and greaves. Though it all seemed a little scuffed and beat up, like it had seen one too many hunts without a lot of time for maintenance. His helmet was a featureless, basic sallet style helmet with a black shiny mirrored visor.

He also wielded a wide, thick bladed, straight longsword about a metre and a half in length, again it was rather plain but still a common feature amongst many hunters, at least as a backup weapon anyway. The only other weapons he seemed to have was a large holstered pistol on his utility belt alongside a shortsword. Overall, the new arrival seemed to be a generic, run of the mill, rank and file hunter.

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“Um…we’re not hunters, we’re Youtubers, we’re - we’re here to make a video,” one of the young men answered nervously, showing a small camera to the hunter. Several of the people behind him pointed their cameras at the hunter with shaky hands.

“Oh…so you guys came to an abandoned, monster infested warehouse at night to make a video for the internet….right……well…..are you insane?” he asked seriously, trying not to let his judgement show. The UK hunters guild had been putting a lot more emphasis into public relations recently and there were now numerous classes and courses hunters of a certain rank were forced to take so that they could properly interact with members of the public when out on a job. The guild actually now had a complaints section on their website where any member of the public could make an anonymous complaint about any hunter and it would be investigated.

“No!” the young man answered indignantly. “Our channel is famous! Or it will be. It's called Beasts of Myth and Legend, BML for short.”

“Uh huh,” the hunter replied disinterestedly as he finished off a not quite dead monster by nudging it with his boot and sending a jolt of electricity into its twitching body.

“Yeah, we’re going to get tons of views from this. And if we don’t get a million subscribers just from this one video then I don’t know what will!” the young man went on enthusiastically.

The hunter stopped listening to the man and scanned the area around him. There were still several Black Mites in the warehouse but he’d managed to deal with the majority of the infestation since it had been gathered here. But now that he knew that non-combatants were in the area, newly established guild protocol dictated that he’d have to escort them to safety first before finishing the job. He sighed in frustration, the guild was really much getting stricter with the rules and regulations these days, he missed the old days when things were a little more gung ho.

“That's great, whatever, but now if you could follow me outside, I’ll take you to safety,” he told the group of camera wielders, still struggling valiantly to remain polite.

“No no no, there’s still way too much to get on video, we’re not leaving yet!” the young man who’d first spoken insisted.

Struggle failed. In response, the hunter grabbed the young man’s camera from his hands and threw it across the warehouse into the darkness. A loud clattering echoed from the far end of the warehouse where the camera landed, likely now in pieces.

“Oh sorry, my hand slipped. Why don’t you go get your camera and I’ll wait here?” the hunter offered.

“You!? - You - That was worth over three thousand pounds! What's your name? I want to see your licence!” the young man demanded.

“Harry, just let it go. He’s right, we need to get out of here!” one of the women with him pleaded.

“No! I’m entitled to see his licence and identity! It's the law now!”

The hunter shrugged and took off his helmet.

“Holy shit! It's Hungry Jack! Jack Errant!”

The group pointed their cameras and phones at Jack with renewed enthusiasm and he took it all in with a bored resignation.

“Mm hm, yeah it's me, now we really need to go. Everyone follow me.” Without waiting for them to agree, Jack grabbed the front collar of the young man and dragged him along. Everyone else only seemed too glad to follow.

While they journeyed through the dark, derelict warehouse, they were constantly accompanied by the clicking and scuttling of the diminutive creatures that stalked them.

The group of people tried to walk as close to Jack as they possibly could.

“What are these things?” one woman spoke up in a terrified whisper.

“Hm? Oh they’re called Black Mites, a G rank monster, not exactly top of the food chain. More like bottom feeders and scavengers,” Jack replied nonchalantly. Then he looked back at the group of wide eyed people following him. “Or opportunists.” He grinned at them.

One Black Mite scuttled out into a patch of moonlight directly in their path but it lingered in place too long, giving Jack an opportunity to casually kick it away with an electrified boot. It sailed away into the surrounding darkness with a weak gurgling wail. He continued to lead the group of Youtubers or independent journalists through the warehouse without missing a step.

“We are so gonna get some views from this!” one of them excitedly shout whispered.