Chapter 1
The Defenders
March 29th, 2110
The sun looked tiredly down on the defenders and the canyon that sheltered them, its rays barely piercing the smog in the upper atmosphere. The canyon was still and silent. The few surviving birds and animals felt what was coming and ran away or hid.
Leo had been unable to eat the tasty breakfast served that morning in the shelter. Eggs and salt pork with hash browns. And he never missed breakfast. His last meal on earth and he'd been too sick and scared to eat it. How's that for messed up?
Normally he'd have run off by now, leaving these people to their fate. It wasn't that he didn't care for them, but there was no point in dying in some hopeless last stand, trying to protect people who were already dead — even if they didn't know it yet.
The only thing stopping him from running was he had nowhere left to go. The shelter he and the other defenders protected, with its 357 human inhabitants (mostly children and a few non-fighters), was the only shelter left.
The only radio stations still working were run by the Boss Afflicted, trying to lure out the last surviving humans. One of Leo's comrades had quietly told him that communication from other implant wearers around the world had ceased. Surviving out in the world without an implant was impossible. For all Leo knew, he and the defenders were among the last surviving humans on earth.
He aimed the machine gun and waited with the others.
Runners caught their scent and, with horrible screams, called out to the rest of their kind. Most Afflicted were runners. Fast. Strong. Stupid, with an excellent sense of smell for sniffing out humans. They had long muscular legs, teeth, and claws, for running humans down, tearing them apart, and eating them. Leo had dealt with the Afflicted most of his life, but their screams still made his pulse race.
Even in the face of hopelessness, the defenders were prepared.
Runners charged into the canyon, packing together where the canyon bottlenecked, getting caught on swaths of barbed wire planted just for them. Runners in the rear smelled the distant humans and pushed against the ones in front, making their retreat impossible, even if they'd wanted to. The scent of fresh human flesh pushed them forward.
Leo aimed his machine gun at this tightly packed group and opened fire. He'd never shot fish in a barrel, but he imagined that this was what it would be like. Bodies piled up in the canyon. Afflicted crawled over the piles of their own dead to get at the defenders, only to be gunned down in turn.
Then there was silence. Nobody relaxed. This was the first wave, a small force sent to test their defenses.
Leo joined the other defenders and rushed over to the dead. Their implants let them absorb Demon Tears from dead Afflicted, something they all desperately needed to survive. They'd eventually get the Demon Tears regardless, but approaching, or better yet, touching the kills increased the absorption rate, and they had little time.
Leo felt a hand on his shoulder. “We can do this, Goblin,” a small bald man Leo knew vaguely as Karl, said. A bit of bald solidarity between the two of them.
Leo nodded.
The hand on Leo's shoulder was shaking. Karl looked sick. Sweat ran down his pale face, and not from the heat. The man was as scared as he was.
Out of habit, he pulled up his own stats.
Subject: Leo/Goblin
Sex: Male
Age: 62
Strength: 85
Vitality: 114
Agility: 79
Intelligence: 5.1
Charisma: 3
Common sense: 7.1
Class: Swordsman/Common. (Level ???)
The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.
“He who travels fastest travels alone.” Kipling
Special Skills:
Time Dilation. Level 10.
Psychokinetic Wind-Blade. Level 8.
Demon Tears. 896
Corruption. 9987
His implant continually flashed red because he'd made bad choices as a child. Choices that had damaged his implant and left his body twisted and deformed. He needed 5120 Demon Tears to level up his Time Dilation, and 1280 to level up his Psychokinetic Blade. Even if he had the Demon Tears, leveling up would require several hours of downtime he didn't have. So there was that.
He'd been told that with his corruption level, it was a miracle he was still human and not one of those mindless Afflicted monsters he was currently killing. His name was Leo. But everyone called him Goblin.
***
As Leo passed a “dead” runner, it came alive, lashing out at Leo with inhuman speed, trying to bite him with its razor-sharp teeth. Leo's strength and agility allowed him to dodge the attack and crush its head under his boot.
The defenders felt the Demigod level Boss's presence before they saw it.
So soon, Leo thought. The bastard must be starving. There were maybe 100 Demigod level Afflicted left in the world and they tended to stake out large cities, where they farmed and ate the human inhabitants like cattle. He'd thought the defenders had a few days at least before one of them showed up.
Tyrone, their leader, raised his right hand, signaling for them to move back up the canyon. Leo followed the others, activating his Time Dilation special skill to cross over a hundred yards of rocky terrain in seconds. The other defenders were faster, but then, they could fly. Flying through levitation was a more advanced skill. A skill denied Leo by his own damaged implant.
Seconds later, a tiny dot appeared in the gray, smog filled sky. It turned into a huge, infant shaped, bloated monstrosity in the blink of an eye, coming down on top of them at an insane supersonic speed.
BOOM!
The shock wave from the attack hurled him backward. Rocks and boulders rained down as the narrow canyon they were defending suddenly became much wider.
This is it, Leo thought. I'm going to die.
Another defender, Artemis, pulled Leo out of the way of a boulder crashing down where he'd been an instant before. Leo, to his shame, was the weakest defender. The others looked out for him.
He activated Time Dilation again, this time supercharging it with 100 Demon Tears, magnifying the effects of his special skill and making it last longer.
His implant's angry red mental display flashed as Time Dilation took effect. It would be days before he could use this skill again, but against a Demigod level Boss, he'd be fortunate to survive the next minute.
As his skill took effect, everything slowed down. The rocks raining down slowed, tumbling and bouncing off each other as if they were moving through water, making them easy to dodge.
The Demigod Boss floated above them, looking like a hideous, 20-foot-tall infant with a long distended penis. The Demigod's pre-change name had been Ambrose Cortez. He'd been a well-known billionaire, but now the surviving humans knew him as Asmodeus. He’d been named for the demon he resembled.
Asmodeus attacked. Even with Time Dilation, the Boss was too fast for Leo to see. There was a second blast. Louder than the first.
Leo woke up covered with sand and gravel. The blast had thrown him over 100 feet down the canyon and left him temporarily deaf. He must have been out for only a few seconds, because his Time Dilation was still going. Even so, Asmodeus was insanely fast. The tentacles coming out of its body lashed out at anyone and anything around him. A tentacle connected with a boulder nearby, turning it to gravel.
Leo was surrounded by dead and dying defenders. His comrades.
He could see Artemis screaming, throwing multiple pyrokinetic and electrical attacks at the Demigod. Not appearing to care, it hauled her toward its enormous gaping mouth. Teeth crushed and tore the woman apart. Leo watched helplessly as Asmodeus chewed up Artemis, then swallowed.
Asmodeus held Tyrone in one of its tentacles. Tyrone seemed calm. He turned and his eyes met Leo's. He had a resigned smile, eyes saying goodbye. Asmodeus raised Tyrone and tossed him into its mouth, where Tyrone exploded in a huge ball of fire.
Tyrone had been a power wielder, a Pyro-Mage. He must have been saving all of his power for this moment, realizing it was their only chance of defeating this thing.
Asmodeus screamed so loudly it made the earth vibrate, its infantile head becoming a burned and blasted ruin, neck so damaged the head hung off to the side. Leo couldn't believe it. Demigod Level Afflicted were practically invulnerable. He'd never heard of any individual person actually hurting one.
Leo activated his Psychokinetic Wind Blade, once again supercharging his special skill with Demon Tears, putting everything he had into one long-range strike to the creature's neck. This strike would have cut down a full-grown redwood tree. A strike Asmodeus wouldn't normally have noticed, but in its weakened state, Leo's strike was all that was needed to sever its head from its neck. Killing it. The creature's giant body crashed into the canyon.
Leo looked up, and let out a sad hysterical laugh. There were five tiny dots in the sky. Five more Demigod Level monsters on their way. He was the last surviving defender. No matter what he did now, he was dead.
Every instinct he had told him to run for his life, but instead of running away, he somehow found himself running toward the giant body in front of him. He was a few feet away when his Time Dilation failed and everything around him sped up. He pushed forward desperately, somehow reaching the Demigod's body and touching it. “Absorb!” Demon Tears from the Demigod filled and changed his implant. At the same time, a blast of energy hit him from above.
He died.