Chapter 37
Fight!
Option D. Shoot the general in the head.
Leo/Joseph pointed his AK 47 assault rifle at the distant general, still talking to his soldiers, and pulled the trigger. Three shots hit the man's face and forehead.
Instead of dying like a normal person, the general, seemingly unhurt, noticed the two boys for the first time. Then the already large man began to expand, growing bigger, and bigger.
Oh shit shit shit shit shit!
Leo/Joseph grabbed Jason/Gavin and dragged him away, shouting, “RUN!”
Tentacles shot out of the General's body as he expanded, losing his humanoid form. With his tentacles, he picked up the armored troop carrier he'd been standing next to, and threw it at the two boys.
Leo pulled Jason/Gavin to one side, feeling the wind created by the armored troop carrier as it flew by them, slamming into the ground nearby with a deafening crash.
“General Schultzberg is a shareholder in DUMB and in charge of our complaints department!” the DUMB representative shouted at the two running boys. “Feel free to talk to him about any of your concerns!”
“They can't do this!” Jason/Gavin shouted. “You can't send a Boss Monster at the beginning of a level!”
“You have a quest,” Imp piped up, surprising Leo. “Destroy that virtual monster before it kills all these virtual people. Reward is 20 Demon Tears.”
“First,” Leo said between breaths, “you've got to be kidding. Second, 20 Demon Tears is nowhere near enough for killing this thing!”
“What?” Jason shouted, breathing hard despite only running in the virtual world.
“I do not set the rewards, Leo. That is determined automatically,” Imp responded, sounding indignant.
General Schultzberg, now a giant tentacled blob, ten feet tall and twenty feet wide, half jumped, half levitated into the air, landing fifty feet away from the two boys.
“That's a High-Level Boss!” Leo/Joseph shouted. “Get behind those trees! Shoot anything that looks vulnerable, like its eyes, and avoid its tentacles at all costs! If that thing grabs you, you're dead!” Leo/Joseph pushed Jason/Gavin in the direction of the distant pine trees. He himself ran like hell in the opposite direction, towards a large meadow where some twenty cars and pickup trucks had parked in a haphazard fashion. The meadow also served as the peppers' makeshift parking lot.
Leo/Joseph activated Prolonged Surge, one of his three surge abilities. Its effects were less noticeable, but they lasted a lot longer. Assuming he wasn't killed immediately, this battle would be a marathon effort, not a sprint.
At least the soldiers serving the general didn't seem inclined to get involved. In the distance, he could see them all running for cover.
He ran behind one truck, then slipped underneath a second one, coming out the other side and dodging behind a third. Tentacles wrapped around the first truck, picked it up, then with an angry roar, threw it at Jason/Gavin where he was running for the trees on the other side of the meadow. A red gas can fell out, rolling and bouncing across the meadow until it slammed into a faded red pickup truck.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
Jason/Gavin dodged to the right, just in time. The flying truck missed him by inches as it slammed into the ground with a thunderous crash, rolling several times before crashing into a tree.
Leo/Joseph used the opportunity to shoot at one of the Boss's many eyes—there were at least twenty—before ducking back behind another car. The Boss's response was to lash out with its tentacles. It had hundreds of them now and they went under, over, and through the vehicles to get at Leo/Joseph as he dodged behind a brown Volkswagen van, somehow avoiding being grabbed.
This was how a mouse feels, running from a cat. A feeling Leo was all too familiar with.
The Bosses they'd fought previously were Low-Level Bosses. Meaning, though they were larger, stronger, and smarter than a non-Boss, they were more or less humanoid-shaped and had human weaknesses. Ergo, two arms, two legs, one brain, and one heart (mostly). High-Level Bosses, on the other hand, could have hundreds of hearts, thousands of arms and legs, a brain spread throughout their body. And they always seemed to have lots and lots of tentacles.
Needless to say, they were much harder to kill.
Tentacles picked up the car Leo/Joseph had been hiding behind. He slashed one of the tentacles with a razor-sharp kukri he'd taken from an inbred mountain-man Boss hours before.
The severed tentacle twisted and flopped on the ground like an angry snake. Leo/Joseph ducked under another truck, barely avoiding twenty tentacles trying to grab him. Jason/Gavin opened fire from the pine trees he'd hidden behind, shooting at part of the Boss that was pixel'd out. Its penis presumably. A splash of red showed he'd scored a hit, but aside from annoying the Boss, did no significant damage.
What was it with High-Level Bosses and their penises? Certainly Afflicted reproduced, but he knew little about the process. He'd heard a lot of off-color jokes in the future from fellow survivors, but no real answers. He remembered someone saying the High-Level female Bosses had penises too. Go figure.
The battle went on for hours, with the huge Boss trying to catch the two boys and tear them apart and the boys running for their lives and hiding, while unfortunately doing no significant damage to the Boss. Cars, trucks, uprooted trees, and still squirming, cut tentacles littered the landscape. There were too many trees for the Boss to make much headway into the pine forest—the trees were the only thing keeping the two of them alive. As the Boss grew angrier and more frustrated, it started picking up its own soldiers, dragging them out from where they'd taken cover and throwing them screaming at the two boys. Considering they were the Boss's own men, it was almost funny, in a not funny kind of way. Live ammo?
There was no question the boys were losing. Leo/Joseph was out of healing packs, his health bar was in the yellow and his Prolonged Surge had long since worn off. He was lucky to be alive by this point. Jason/Gavin had to be little better off. They were getting tired. The Boss had far more endurance than they did, and it was only a matter of time until they messed up or got unlucky. If they somehow lasted until nightfall, they'd be dead. The Boss had much better night vision.
One of the general's airborne soldiers slammed into a truck next to Leo/Joseph. Quickly searching the body, Leo found much-needed ammo and grenades. He knew better than to throw grenades at the Boss. It would just flick them back with its tentacles, but it did give him the beginnings of a desperate plan. While playing his life-or-death game of tag with the Boss, he searched the rest of the dead soldiers coming up with ten grenades.
Huddling next to the last soldier he'd searched, a chubby man with a cross next to his dog tags, his broken body lying in a pool of blood. Leo/Joseph waited.
A car slammed into Leo/Joseph, sending him flying. He crawled slowly away trying to find cover, his health bar in the red. The tentacled monstrosity approached Leo, looking down on him, knowing he was out of the fight. Instead of picking him up and finishing him off, it first grabbed the soldier Leo/Joseph had been next to, and tossed him into the giant, many-toothed cavern that passed for its mouth.
There was a huge explosion as the ten grenades Leo/Joseph had planted in the soldier went off, and an angry roar rose from the wounded Boss. He had been counting on the Boss being hungry. Bosses were always hungry. He held the ten firing pins he'd pulled from the grenades he'd planted on the dead soldier.
Of course, the explosion didn't kill the Boss, but it weakened it significantly. The tentacled monstrosity remained still for a few seconds, shocked by what had happened.
Leo/Joseph used the two health packs he'd taken from the soldiers and activated his two remaining surge skills. Maximum Surge and Super Surge. He'd found out by accident that the different surges in his special skills stacked together, but they only lasted as long as the shortest skill, and as always, the cool-down time was significant.
Time slowed way down. Even the fast-moving tentacles of the Boss seemed to slow, making them easy to dodge. Leo/Joseph grabbed the ten gallon gas container he'd spotted earlier in the meadow and charged the wounded Boss.